Trying to recovery pictures off my old hard drive from my hp7850. Got new computer cause 1)have had that computer for 8 years 2)lights flickered one night and couldnt get it to restart. Only get where it says "restart windows with last known config, all three safe mode starts, and another one". It just goes through the cycle and never boots up. So I wonder if I can even recovery any files. I tried using the ide cable out of old system, thought the boot sequence was set right, but it did sometimes go to that same screen of starting in safe mode and so forth. Sometimes it would boot from new computer. I tried slaving it and cs, but cant get it for some reason. I know the new hardrive using sata cables you can only jumper the speed. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

Don't try to boot to the old drive in a different system. Connect as a slave and access the drive after you are in Windows. You may need to take ownership of the files/ folders on the old disk. To learn how to do that look at the link below. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

Didnt intentionally try to boot from it, it went to it for some strange reason. The new computer recognizes it in the bios, but cant find it as a drive on my computer. Will try to slave it again and see what happens.

When you attach it to your new computer you may need to alter the boot sequence in bios to make sure the old/IDE drive is not listed to boot before the SATA drive. as to whether to set the drive jumper as master or slave, that depends on whether it is alone on the IDE cable . As long as you have the boot order correct it shouldn't matter whether the IDE drive is on a cable by itself as master or attached as slave to another cable such as the one your optic drive resides on. Goin' Fishin' (Some day)

Yes thanks. I think I just figured it out and now need to use that link you gave me cause is saying I dont have permission. I dont think I rebooted when I should have, and when I did, I didnt change the priority. I thought the new hard drive would automatically be first so now I am trying to recover files cause I can see them now. So thats all the master/slave is for is the cable its on, not hard drives actually installed. Im using the ide cable slave and have old hard drive as slave. Thanks guys!

Look for the old drive in Disk Management. If it shows there as a basic drive then you need to take ownership of the files (see #1 above). If it doesn't show as basic but you do see it in Disk Management you may need to use recovery software or possibly a live version of Linux. Knoppix is a good one for that.

Thanks man for that taking ownership, I would have definetaly got stuck on that part. Although the instructions were for XP in safe mode, I was able to do it in normal mode in Vista. Am starting to like this new look of vista and learing my way around it. Once again, thanks for everything. Guess I will capture everything I need off of it and then fix my old computer, maybe sell it, or let it be the 6 years old. Was time to get a new one anyways.