Issue with hardrive from old pc (IDE)

[beginner99]

My parents still have 2 rather old p4 systems. Now one of the pc's doesn't boot anymore. It gets to the win xp loading screen, loads for a few seconds and then just reboots.
Only way to stop the cylce is to cut off power.

I then took this hdd out an pu tin in the second system with jumpers set to slave and jumper of the already present hdd to master w/ slave.

What happens? exactly the same behaviour. win xp starts loading and then reboot. When I disconnect the "broken" hdd, it works again.
Now I'm not sure which hdd it chose for booting. I thought it would pic the master automatically. Anyway I went to bios and tried all hdd-s (0-3) as boot device. But that didn't help too. As soon as this "broken" hdd is in the systen, it just won't boot.

Any ideas?

 

[corkyg]

Try it with only the one HDD in question installed, and set it as Master.

 

[RebateMonger]

What are you trying to accomplish?

If you want to grab data off the old hard drive, your best shot is to put the drive into an IDE-to-USB external housing or use an IDE/SATA-to-USB cable. After booting the working PC, try plugging in the USB device and see if the old drive can be read.

Be sure to follow any directions regarding jumper settings with the IDE-to-USB adapters. It used to be that they wanted the hard drive set to "Master", although "Cable Select" may work, too.

 

[applepearwine]

Try to hit F8 as soon as it is past the bios post. Then select Safe Mode. See what happens. Could also boot the xpcd and go to command line prompt and try and fix it that way.

 

[beginner99]

What are you trying to accomplish?

If you want to grab data off the old hard drive, your best shot is to put the drive into an IDE-to-USB external housing or use an IDE/SATA-to-USB cable. After booting the working PC, try plugging in the USB device and see if the old drive can be read.

Be sure to follow any directions regarding jumper settings with the IDE-to-USB adapters. It used to be that they wanted the hard drive set to "Master", although "Cable Select" may work, too.

Yeah that would probably be the next step because I don't have such a cable just lying around.

Safe mode doesn't work. Same behaviour. Starts loading, then just restarts for no apparent reason.

haven't tried xpcd. will do next time I visit my parents.

they will buy a new one anyway but getting of the data would be nice too. But they do have a backup, just not of the most recent stuff (1-2month). I actually told them because the pc wasn't exactly fast (especially hdd) and it did seem it might be starting to fail.