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Help with hard drive transfer to new system.

Denithor

Denithor

Diamond Member
I am transfering a customer's hard drive from her old Gateway P3-700 into a Celeron-1.7 system. The hdd functions fine in her box, loads Windows flawlessly on the first try every time. However, when moved into the new box, the initial Windows "loading" screen does not even come up, it just reboots and goes through BIOS post again, then askes what flavor of safe mode I want to load. None of the safe modes will load however, it just does the same thing over again (starts to load the drivers, then hangs and reboots).

The Celeron box works fine with a different hdd with a fresh install of Windows (out of a third system).

Her copy of Windows (XP Pro) is up to date with SP2 and everything runs fine in her Gateway system (but not in any of my three other functional systems).

Any suggestions?
Thanks!
 
On the non-bootable system, boot with your XP CD, select 'enter' to do a new installation at the first screen, then select 'R' to repair the existing installation that is detected.

This will force setup to redetect and install hardware while preserving your existing applications and data.
 
Cool, I will try that tonight. Any idea why my other hard drives will move from one box to another with no problems, while this one will not? Her hdd is an older 20Gb Seagate but it works fine in her system.

Any other ideas to try (in case this does not work out)?

Thanks!
 
Depending on the age of her system you may be jumping from a APIC to an ACPI HAL. That's a no-no. With modern systems you're likely staying on the same HAL (ACPI) while moving from system to system so as long as your mass storage controller doesn't change (ATA to SATA for instance) Windows will boot and PNP detect it's way out of the hardware change. Sometimes the hardware differences are just too great so you have to do an inplace upgrade/repair to get booting.

If the repair option doesn't do the trick the troubleshooting will get complicated beyond what can reasonably be accomplished via passing posts back and forth on a thread. It has a very high probability of success though.

A non-repair installation over the top of the existing Windows install (without a format) would be the next logical step. This would preserve existing data but destroy installed apps. I doubt you'll have to go there.
 
Originally posted by: Denithor
I am transfering a customer's hard drive from her old Gateway P3-700 into a Celeron-1.7 system. The hdd functions fine in her box, loads Windows flawlessly on the first try every time. However, when moved into the new box, the initial Windows "loading" screen does not even come up, it just reboots and goes through BIOS post again, then askes what flavor of safe mode I want to load. None of the safe modes will load however, it just does the same thing over again (starts to load the drivers, then hangs and reboots).

The Celeron box works fine with a different hdd with a fresh install of Windows (out of a third system).

Her copy of Windows (XP Pro) is up to date with SP2 and everything runs fine in her Gateway system (but not in any of my three other functional systems).

Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Put the drive back in the P3.
Turn off automatic reboots (under my computer / properties)
Put it back in the new Celeron.
Tell us the BSOD.
If it's "inaccessible boot device" then do A).
If it's ACPI ... computer has been shut down to prevent damage to your hardware.. then follow Stash's advice.

A) Put the drive in the old p3. Go to Device Manager and change the IDE controllers to "PCI Standard IDE Controller" and then shut down. Do not reboot! Take the drive out, put it in the new Celeron, and try to boot it.

Stash's is good advice though ... chances are good it's a HAL issue.
 
I have not sucessfully moved a hard drive between motherboards with different chipsets. I have had mixed luck with hard drives moving between motherboards with the same chipset
 
Originally posted by: dclive
Put the drive back in the P3.
Turn off automatic reboots (under my computer / properties)
Put it back in the new Celeron.
Tell us the BSOD.
If it's "inaccessible boot device" then do A).
If it's ACPI ... computer has been shut down to prevent damage to your hardware.. then follow Stash's advice.

A) Put the drive in the old p3. Go to Device Manager and change the IDE controllers to "PCI Standard IDE Controller" and then shut down. Do not reboot! Take the drive out, put it in the new Celeron, and try to boot it.

Stash's is good advice though ... chances are good it's a HAL issue.
Click to expand...

So after I turn off auto-reboot I should expect to get a BSOD when it tries to load in the new box? Right now it does not even get to the Windows load screen (with the blue thing scrolling back and forth), it just reboots immediately after the BIOS stuff is done. I will try this first tonight, if I get a BSOD I will post it here.

Thanks for the advice, guys!
 
Originally posted by: Denithor
Originally posted by: dclive
Put the drive back in the P3.
Turn off automatic reboots (under my computer / properties)
Put it back in the new Celeron.
Tell us the BSOD.
If it's "inaccessible boot device" then do A).
If it's ACPI ... computer has been shut down to prevent damage to your hardware.. then follow Stash's advice.

A) Put the drive in the old p3. Go to Device Manager and change the IDE controllers to "PCI Standard IDE Controller" and then shut down. Do not reboot! Take the drive out, put it in the new Celeron, and try to boot it.

Stash's is good advice though ... chances are good it's a HAL issue.
Click to expand...

So after I turn off auto-reboot I should expect to get a BSOD when it tries to load in the new box? Right now it does not even get to the Windows load screen (with the blue thing scrolling back and forth), it just reboots immediately after the BIOS stuff is done. I will try this first tonight, if I get a BSOD I will post it here.

Thanks for the advice, guys!
Click to expand...

The reason it reboots is you have auto-reboot turned on. Turn that off, and you'll get the BSOD text and information.
 
Originally posted by: siliconhills
I have not sucessfully moved a hard drive between motherboards with different chipsets. I have had mixed luck with hard drives moving between motherboards with the same chipset
Click to expand...

Windows won't boot for two reasons. All the other differences in the world won't matter. The chipset doesn't matter - the hard drive controller IN the chipset is what matters.

1. Different HAL. Look in Device Manager under COMPUTER - both new and old computer must show the same thing (with a few exceptions) if you want to move hard drives between them. Stash's post is the workaround for this issue.

2. Different hard drive controller for the drive with XP on it. If this is different, the step I posted will typically fix this issue by using the PCI Standard IDE controller to boot the box...once that happens, XP can autodetect the rest.

 
Here's what I have done so far:

Hooked up old drive to old computer, fired up, no problems. Went into Hardware setup, turned off auto-reboot. Checked system, both (new & old) appear to be the same: ACPI HAL. Went ahead and set IDE controller to standard IDE disk driver. Powered down, removed hard drive, hooked up in celeron box, fired up, immediate BSOD.

BSOD: Stop: 0X0000007B (0xF993F528, 0XC0000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

I have also used the WinXP disc to do the repair function, then performed a chkdsk /p and it found "one or more errors" on the disc. What else do I need to do to get this thing to play well with the other components? What exactly do I need to do in the repair area to get this thing working correctly?

Thanks!
 
Originally posted by: Denithor
Here's what I have done so far:

Hooked up old drive to old computer, fired up, no problems. Went into Hardware setup, turned off auto-reboot. Checked system, both (new & old) appear to be the same: ACPI HAL. Went ahead and set IDE controller to standard IDE disk driver. Powered down, removed hard drive, hooked up in celeron box, fired up, immediate BSOD.

BSOD: Stop: 0X0000007B (0xF993F528, 0XC0000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

I have also used the WinXP disc to do the repair function, then performed a chkdsk /p and it found "one or more errors" on the disc. What else do I need to do to get this thing to play well with the other components? What exactly do I need to do in the repair area to get this thing working correctly?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Stop 7B - Inaccessible Boot Device? Ouch. 🙁 The change to "Standard PCI IDE Controller" should have resolved that so the system could boot. What chipset does the new motherboard use? Is there a driver you could install (while attached to the P3) on the other computer, so the driver would be loaded/available when you put the HDD into the new machine?

 
Originally posted by: Denithor
I have also used the WinXP disc to do the repair function, then performed a chkdsk /p and it found "one or more errors" on the disc. What else do I need to do to get this thing to play well with the other components? What exactly do I need to do in the repair area to get this thing working correctly?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Whoa!? You did a repair? While the hdd was in the new Celeron's MB? Then you should be perfectly able to boot the box.

The repair Smilin was talking about isn't the first repair (recovery console, really) option - you hit ENTER to get past that prompt, then select your partition, THEN select repair. I'm guessing you did the first (recovery console, a command-line interface) option - is that right?

 
I suggest you first attempt to install the IDE drivers for the new motherboard, while booted with the old motherboard, and then take the box to your new motherboard and try booting with it, prior to the repair.
 
Ok, that did the trick. I performed the repair on the main Windows partition, which basically re-installed Windows from scratch but kept her files intact and programs functional. Everything works in the new celeron box now! Yah!

BTW, thanks bunches & bunches for the advice, guys, it really saved the day!
 
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