Somewhat of a novice here, so thanks for your time...
Trying to help my neighbor lady with her computer. She's running XP Pro SP3, but on an older PC-- a Micron PC from 1999, with a Pentium 3 (that's right, 3) processor, and 768MB RAM.
Everything works fine, albeit a little slow. The hard drive is actually an upgraded one, not the original. It is a Western Digital EIDE, 7200rpm, 80GB.
She has come across a Dell Dimension 8200, with a Pentium 4 processor. I think it came from her son. This Dell's HD has an OEM version of XP on it.
What I wanted to do was simply swap the HDD from the Micron into the Dell, and she would benefit from the processor speed, but not get frustrated with a re-install of everything.
I can do the physical drive swap, no problem. The Dell will post, and recognize the drive. I get as far as the "We're sorry but WIndows did not exit normally last time" screen, and no matter if I choose to Start Windows Normally, or Last Known Good, or Safe Mode... the Dell just goes into a loop of rebooting (showing the Dell splash and the BIOS version, which is A09.)
I can put the HDD back into the old PC, and it boots fine. I've tried on 3 different occasions now, with the same result. FInally, I tried a differnt HDD.. one that I know came from another Dell PC. It works fine.
So... is this because the Dell's motherboard/chipset is different? If so, what can I do to make it work with the HDD from the Micron?
Or is this a Dell/Microsoft security thing to prevent the OEM drive with OEM Windows from going somewhere else? Is there any way around this? All the installations of Windows in the picture are paid for and licensed. Since this HDD is relatively new, it seems it ought to just work.
Thanks again for your time.
Trying to help my neighbor lady with her computer. She's running XP Pro SP3, but on an older PC-- a Micron PC from 1999, with a Pentium 3 (that's right, 3) processor, and 768MB RAM.
Everything works fine, albeit a little slow. The hard drive is actually an upgraded one, not the original. It is a Western Digital EIDE, 7200rpm, 80GB.
She has come across a Dell Dimension 8200, with a Pentium 4 processor. I think it came from her son. This Dell's HD has an OEM version of XP on it.
What I wanted to do was simply swap the HDD from the Micron into the Dell, and she would benefit from the processor speed, but not get frustrated with a re-install of everything.
I can do the physical drive swap, no problem. The Dell will post, and recognize the drive. I get as far as the "We're sorry but WIndows did not exit normally last time" screen, and no matter if I choose to Start Windows Normally, or Last Known Good, or Safe Mode... the Dell just goes into a loop of rebooting (showing the Dell splash and the BIOS version, which is A09.)
I can put the HDD back into the old PC, and it boots fine. I've tried on 3 different occasions now, with the same result. FInally, I tried a differnt HDD.. one that I know came from another Dell PC. It works fine.
So... is this because the Dell's motherboard/chipset is different? If so, what can I do to make it work with the HDD from the Micron?
Or is this a Dell/Microsoft security thing to prevent the OEM drive with OEM Windows from going somewhere else? Is there any way around this? All the installations of Windows in the picture are paid for and licensed. Since this HDD is relatively new, it seems it ought to just work.
Thanks again for your time.