HP windows XP hard drive wont boot in new system

adza0975

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I have just built a system with a P5KPL mobo and E7400 CPU. I moved the hard drive from my HP system but it will not load WINDOWS XP that is on the hard drive. The recovery disk will not work either.

I get the following error when trying to load Windows in SAFE mode

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\windows\system32\hal.dll
etc for about 30 more files

would the hard drive be linked somehow to the HP motherboard with some type of code and will not boot in a non-HP system?

It is a SATA drive and the boot priorities are setup correctly in the BIOS

can anyone help without having to format / install a new hard drive?
 
Unless the 2 motherboards are nearly identical, you are very lucky if it will boot at all.

Your HP recovery disk won't work in anything but an HP computer.

Lastly, you would not be able to activate Windows even if you could do a repair install, as the OEM license is only good for 1 computer.

Basically, you need to buy a retail version of Windows, install it on a new drive, and then move all your documents and settings over to it. What you are trying to do simply won't work.
 

Shnur

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You don't need to buy a new hard drive, but you can't move hard drives with specific drivers from one place to another...
 
You have run into a brick wall .

theres no way to get a hard drive from an oem brand computer to run on another mb

You dont need to buy a retail version of windows though.

Download the free RC of windows 7 and use that till march next year for free .
Get the 64 bit , and only download it from microsoft
 


You can with XP , but you need to do a repair install , which unfortunately wont fix the OP's problem
 

B-Unit

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You CAN move an OEM licence to another computer, you just have to call the activation line and verify that you only have the OS installed on a single PC.
 

adza0975

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Cheers for the info guys. I have a new HDD and will get VISTA to format it for me when I run the installation from my DVD drive. Hopefully it will all go OK
 

Shnur

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*poke* Get Windows 7 RC
:ange:
 

adza0975

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No worries, I'll d/l it this arvo (OZ time) and copy it to a DVD and boot from that. Hopefully it will give the option to format the new HDD in the process
 



Here we go again. It's really, really hard to activate it....IF IT WON"T WORK.
 

Shnur

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It will give you all the options, and I would personally go for Windows Seven now as main OS and not buy Vista, when the actually OS will come out (hopefully in October) you'll just buy a license, but no need to waste money on Vista now when seven is around the corner and due in a few months.