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Advice??? How to swap harddrive on Dell 4550?

A

aircasper

Senior member
hi everyone, i recently purchased the dell dimension 4550 and i'd like to swap in my old harddrive as the primary harddrive on this computer. i'm taking this harddrive out of an amd athlon xp 1700+ machine, which had windows xp professional installed. i was hoping that simply connecting this harddrive as the primary harddrive on the dell 4550 would work, but when i boot up, i get a blue screen error saying something is wrong with windows. any thoughts on what the best way is to get my old harddrive to work as the primary drive on the dell machine?

the reason i'm trying to do this is i have a bunch of applications installed on my old harddrive and i don't want to have to reinstall them on the harddrive that came with the dell. also, my "old" harddrive is actually a quieter drive (maxtor 40gig with fluid-dynamic bearings, as opposed to the maxtor 40gig with standard bearings that came with the dell) so i'd like it to be my primary drive.

thanks for your help!
 
Did the system your old harddrive was in have a VIA chipset? Are you getting "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" errors?
 
The previous system had an AMD 761 chipset (biostar m7mia motherboard) but it also had some via controllers on there, using via drivers. the specific error i get is the following:

"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer."

"If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:"

"Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly instlled hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated."

"Run Chkdsk /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer."

"Technical Information:"

"*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xFC8D3640, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)"


The old hard drive works fine on the system as a secondary drive, if i boot up with the drive that came installed with the Del 4550. However, I can't seem to boot with the old harddrive. I have the drives set for cable select and have the cable connections properly cofigured. Not sure what it means regarding having the hard drive properly terminated. I've checked the BIOS settings and it's recognizing the various hard drive set ups that I've been trying, so I don't think it's a BIOS or connector problem. Any thoughts?
 
Sounds like it doesn't like the new Intel HDD controller. The Biostar M7MIA has a VIA southbridge (the chip that controls the HDDs). You MAY be able to put the drive BACK in the M7MIA setup, boot into WIndows, Go to Device Manager.

Under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers", select the main VIA controller entry. Right-click, select "Properties", then click on the "Driver" tab. Click on "Update Driver", then "Next", select "Display a list...." then "Next", FInd and select "Standard Dual CHannel PCI IDE Controller". Shut down the PC, and then pull the drive and try it in the Dell system. WIn2k/XP will almost never work on different motherboards with different HDD controllers. Your best bet is to do a fresh install...
 
Originally posted by: SuperSix
Sounds like it doesn't like the new Intel HDD controller. The Biostar M7MIA has a VIA southbridge (the chip that controls the HDDs). You MAY be able to put the drive BACK in the M7MIA setup, boot into WIndows, Go to Device Manager.

Under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers", select the main VIA controller entry. Right-click, select "Properties", then click on the "Driver" tab. Click on "Update Driver", then "Next", select "Display a list...." then "Next", FInd and select "Standard Dual CHannel PCI IDE Controller". Shut down the PC, and then pull the drive and try it in the Dell system. WIn2k/XP will almost never work on different motherboards with different HDD controllers. Your best bet is to do a fresh install...
Click to expand...

alas, i think you're right about the fresh install. i don't have the m7mia setup any more as i sold that machine (with a smaller hard drive) when i got the dell. one benefit of doing a fresh install on the old harddrive using is that it will free up the windows xp pro retail version that i had installed on the old harddrive (i'll just do a fresh install using the windows xp pro OEM version that came with the Dell).

thanks a lot for the help!
 
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