desktop crashed - win xp

[delboy]

My desktop won't turn on properly. Don't know what happened! I tried to turn
it on one day and as it is an e-machine it starts up but only displays the
big e on the black screen.
It has an 80gb Hard drive with little or no space on it, an Intel Celeron
processor and 512 RAM.
It served it's purpose for about 3 years and I was never too fond of it
anyway but as it had some personal stuff on it it would be nice to be able to
retrieve it somehow.
I am toying with the idea of building one PC from this and another that I
have (Windows ME) but am unsure how to go about it or if it is even possible??
Is it possible to take the hard drive and ram from one and manually insert
them into the other? What is the procedure, if any?
I am under the assumption that I have lost everything but I live in hope.
I have only recently treated myself to a Toshiba A210 Laptop which is the
bees knees.
Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks!


delboy

 

[Juan Perez]

Hi:

If you plan to use some parts from your old computer, you have to get a
motherboard (mobo) able to use your old hardware. For the HD drive, you can
get a mobo with a PATA (IDE) interface. Nowadays the standard is SATA. Some
mobo have both interfaces.

About the memory things are more complicated. Now the standards for memory
are DDR and DDR2. I belive that 3 years ago that standards did not exist, so
you will be unable to use your actual memory.

I recommend you to take a look to this webpage, were you can check the
lastest technical information about computers and get useful tips for your
new computer.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/

Personally, except for the HDD, I do not recommend to use your old hardware.