HP won't accept new hard drive, dvd burner

[mhynson1]

My computer died, so I borrowed one (HP Pavilliona310n). When I try to put the hard drive or the DVD-burner from my old computer into the new one, the computer won't work - says that no operating system is found. It does this with either drive, as well as both together.

Is this something that HP did so you would have to get parts from them? If not, how can I fix it? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[loneninja]

Is your BIOS even listing that a hard drive is connected?

 

[mhynson1]

Yes the drives show up in the BIOS. That was what really threw me off. I know enough to be able to check that, but not enough to know what to do from there.

When I install the other drives, the HP start up screen comes up (where you check the BIOS from), then a cursor shows up on a blank screen for about 2 minutes, then the cursor is replaced by "Operating System Not Found".

The computer works fine when the originals are in, and I went through and cleaned the computer thoroughly as far as viruses, spyware, etc are concerned (found info on other message boards, spent 3 hours doing all recommended actions).

 

[jitpublisher]

Even if you do get the drive to be recognized correctly, which I am going to say has something to do with the way you are hooking them up, are these IDE drives?
If so, do you have the jumpers set correctly on them? Do you have them plugged into the correct places on the cable? Are they SATA? Do you have the boot order set correctly for the way you are installing the new drives into the HP? A little more info would be helpful...but anyway.......
getting back to where I was going, you cannot simply move a Windows installion from PC to PC. It just won't work, even if you do get the PC to find the bootable drive with Windows installed on it. All the drivers, motherboard resources, everything about the Windows install is configured for your old PC, and nothing about the install is correct for the PC you are trying to put the drive into.
Not saying that it cannot be done, but it involves doing a repair install first on the new system, because it likely will never boot and simply blue screen, and then you can probably get it to boot, but the install will be flakey, and simply won't ever work 100% like it should.

 

[mhynson1]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like you are mostly referring to the hard drive. Can I at least get the DVD burner to work?

As far as how they are hooked up, everything is exactly like it was before. Meaning that no settings, positions,m etc have been changed. I took the CD burner out of the new computer and put the DVD burner in its spot. I hooked it up the same way that it was hooked up in the old computer (which is also the same way that the CD burner was hooked up in the new comp).

Not sure what an IDE drive is, but everything is set the the way that it was before (so apparently, my jumpers are the same!).