I have 2 computers, one with a fried motherboard and one with a small hard drive. Both have XP installed on the hard drives. I want to simply replace the small hard drive with the one from the fried computer. I tried just plugging in the IDE cable and power supply but the computer kept rebooting. I'm guessing it can't figure out where the boot sector is. How can I get it to boot up XP on the bigger hard drive? Justin

Hi is the hard drive out of the fried pc also fried? if not follow this guide to ensure some sequence of installing a hard drive correctly has been followed, take some time to read through, then check again before switching the pc on, www. /resource/install-ide-hard-drive.htm its worth understanding the xp from the fried pc will probably not work on the second pc, you will have to install a new Xp if the hardware e.g. mother board was different. hope this helps weird i ve tried to post the link several times it just doesnt copy properly google the bit of the link ive posted and you will see it homes in on Easeus web site full instructions for ide drive there meanwhile maybe c.net/ JW web admin can explain why this happens as ive noticed this alot recently, am i banned from linking to this site? ty all

It turned out that the hard drive wasn't even being recognized so I think there was something wrong with it. Anyway, thanks for your time. Justin

A hard drive may not be recognised by the BIOS if the cabling or jumpers are set wrong. If the drive is an IDE ATA type and you are connecting to a cable with another drive on it you must have BOTH drives configured correctly in order for them to work. For example, HDrive jumpered as Master, second drive jumpered as Slave. Or BOTH jumpered as CS (cable select). In that case the drive you wish to be the Master must be connected to the end of the cable. Otherwise the connection point doesn't matter. If connecting to a Second IDE channel it may not be Enabled in the BIOS. Lastly, SOME Western Digital hard drives have a Master alone setting. This setting is used IF that drive is the only drive connected to the cable.