Move hard drive from lightning-damaged PC

[Guest]

Hi all,

A lightning strike fried my Dell 4400. The surge seemed to come
through my cable line, through the cable modem and router, and into the
PC. Fortunately the hard drive didn't seem to get damaged because I
can hook it up as a secondary drive in another Dell and see all my
files.

However, I would like to hook it up as the primary drive in another PC
and get it to boot. When I try that, I get a blue-screen lockup.

I assume that XP Pro is pretty sensitive to hardware changes. Is it
possible to move an XP Pro hard drive to another PC and get it to boot?
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jay

 

[Rod Speed]

A lightning strike fried my Dell 4400.

You were warned about that blasphemy, you wouldnt listen....

The surge seemed to come through my cable line, through the
cable modem and router, and into the PC. Fortunately the hard
drive didn't seem to get damaged because I can hook it up as
a secondary drive in another Dell and see all my files.

However, I would like to hook it up as the primary drive in another
PC and get it to boot. When I try that, I get a blue-screen lockup.

I assume that XP Pro is pretty sensitive to hardware changes.
Yes.

Is it possible to move an XP Pro hard drive to another PC
and get it to boot? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, just boot the XP CD and repair the installation
on the hard drive with it setup as the boot drive.

Just go thru the initial menus as if you are going to do a
clean install and it will offer to repair the existing install.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Rod, I'll give that a shot. Does it matter that the XP CD will
be the original version of XP and the hard drive already has XP SP2 on
it?

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks Rod, I'll give that a shot. Does it matter that the XP CD will be
the original version of XP and the hard drive already has XP SP2 on it?

Its not ideal. Its easy to slipstream SP2 onto a copy of the XP CD.

 

[Guest]

Its not ideal. Its easy to slipstream SP2 onto a copy of the XP CD.

Thanks Rod. For anyone else out there who doesn't know how to
slipstream SP2 onto an XP CD, here's a good description:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp

 

[Guest]

Just to wrap up this thread. I successfully slipstreamed SP2 to my
Dell Windows XP Pro CD, moved the hard drive to a new Dell, and then
performed a repair install. Worked like a charm!