I just screwed myself prett bad...didn't I?

[delussional77]

Okay, I figured myself to be somewhat computer competent over the years but I guess I was way wrong.

I was in the process of taking all my good hardware out of my main rig and installing it into a new HTPC (which would soon become my one and only computer).

At this point I had been using the HTPC for a few months and it had its own windows xp drive in it. I have been having some BSOD issues in the HTPC so I decided to toss in my main rig's windows drive and run it off there (plus all my good programs were on it).

So I tossed in the main rig's windows drive into the HTPC and soon as windows would try to boot it BSOD'ed with a critical failure. I tried it a few more times hoping to boot into safe mode but I couldn't get anything to work.

I then took the main rig's window drive and put it back into the original folder. Now it won't boot into windows and I can't even repair the drive with my original XP disc...

how screwed am I?

Is there anything I can do fix this situation and not lose everything on the main rig's window drive?

 

[robisbell]

well, without knowing the exact hardware in each and properly testing before swapping hard drives, you may have done damage to both machines. in the order of things you've skipped steps 1-24 and went to step 25.

 

[delussional77]

are there any steps I can take after the fact to try to recover any info from this HD?

i'm going to just completely reformat the HTPC's windows drive and start over from scratch on there

 

[ksheets]

This is what you seek

UBCD for Win
you can make a windows live cd and access everything on the harddrive

 

[Dillybob]

If the hardware in both rigs isn't exactly identical, a new hard drive would need a new install of windows when being put into a different rig, otherwise you're just asking for trouble.

It's always a good idea to have a portable hard drive to back up all the important stuff b4 messing with the hardware. Not trying to put you down, just sayin', y'know, for future reference....

Restarting is a good idea in this case.

 

[delussional77]

thanks for the advice everyone

thankfully, I do have all of this information backed up. It just sucks that I'll be losing a lot of my good programs and all of my custom settings.

I will give the UBCD a try tonight and hopefully that works.

I was also told to just stick the borked main rig's window drive into the HTPC as a slave drive and that I would be able to get my data off it that way.

Can anyone confirm that? (Don't want to do anymore damage...)

 

[XxPrOdiGyxX]

Unfortunately, the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) doesn't work like, I think, it's supposed to. I can't remember off the top of my head if it was to abstract the hardware from the kernel only during installation or even after an installation. Eitherway, I've never had a system boot successfully without blue screening when I swapped out the motherboard.

 

[XxPrOdiGyxX]

Originally posted by: delussional77
thanks for the advice everyone

thankfully, I do have all of this information backed up. It just sucks that I'll be losing a lot of my good programs and all of my custom settings.

I will give the UBCD a try tonight and hopefully that works.

I was also told to just stick the borked main rig's window drive into the HTPC as a slave drive and that I would be able to get my data off it that way.

Can anyone confirm that? (Don't want to do anymore damage...)

You can get an adapter that has IDE and SATA interfaces that you can plug into the hard drive and plug it into your unit as a USB port. That way you don't have to go through the trouble of installing and uninstalling the drive.

 

[delussional77]

prodigy, that was exactly what I was planning on doing

unless the HD has fatally borked I should assume that all of my data is still there, right?

 

[Blunc]

have you attempted booting to safe mode? if you can boot safe mode, you're only dealing with driver problems most likely.

I have been able to perform a "repair install" after having to replace a mobo with a different make of mobo, you should be able to do this if you can boot off your windows CD.

 

[delussional77]

Blunc, I forgot to mention, but Yes, I have tried to boot into safe mode.

It loads the safe-mode drivers and then a few seconds later BSOD's.

Gonna try the external enclosure route tonight along with the UBCD and see if it works

all my data is backed up (more or less) so i'm not too concerned if I have to just flatten and reinstall

 

[RebateMonger]

Your data is still there and can be access with a USB adapter or as a secondary drive on another PC. If you tried booting Windows after moving your hard drive to a different system without adequate disk controller driver preparation, then, yeah, it'll go into an infinite reboot cycle.

You should be able to put the hard drive back into its original PC and perform a "Repair Install" of Windows XP. Just to be safe, I'd copy important data that hasn't been backed up to another drive first. It never hurts to have extra backups.

After you've got the old drive booting in the old PC, you should be able to change the drive controller to "Generic IDE", shut down the PC, and move the hard drive to the new hardware and get it to boot.

 

[delussional77]

rebatemonger,

I tried putting the drive back into the main pc and it wouldn't boot and I couldn't repair it either

it claimed there was no windows partition on it...

I'm going to try the USB adapter and see if that works

thanks!