hard drive help

[HI-TEKKSOLUTIONS]

I have an old hp pentium 4 celeron computer and the hard drive died. I have another computer which had a 20gig hard drive in it with a fresh copy of xp prof. service pack 3 and it ran perfect. So i took that hard drive out and put it in the hp thinking that i would just have to activate windows again once it was in. when i turned on the hp all i got was a read disk error. i tried chkdsk, setting the jumper on every selection, and even went through the bios and tried everything. Bios read that the disk was there but once it got past the post, still all i got was the disk read error. so i went ahead and put the windows disk in and put on a fresh copy and it installed it fine. my question is why didnt the os just boot up when i put the harddrive in. Does any one have any ideas what it was?

 

[14049752]

I'm guessing that it's probably a slight difference in the controllers. You didn't mention how old the HP is, but maybe something to do with a slight difference in how the controllers calculate capacity. I might be wrong, but I think maybe going from 48-bit LBA to 28-Bit LBA (or 28 to 48) can sometimes cause that to happen.

Oh, and before anyone points it out: I realize the drive isn't over 137GB and that's typically what's associated with capacity problems between 28 and 48-bit lba.

 

[nonchalant]

I suspect a conflict with the MBR. Commonly with XP you cant just swap a HDD with a fresh copy of windows into a new PC. A format is the way to go.

 

[PcTestCard.com]

Xp and any other NT based OS cannot work like the previous windows98 or ME do. When installing the XP, the PC goes throuhg the hardware attraction layet device installation and the system "recognised" the mainboard chipset/devices serial already, cannot simply swapping xp among the different PCs even the same type of PCs.

If the PC boot to the other HDD with other XP, the booting process is going to fail. You will never see the desktop sceen.

For disk read error message, it should be just like the upper poster said, something about the master boot record. incorrect master boot code in the different MBR, will not link the BIOs posting process to the HDD XP boot files to boot to XP.

So reinstalling the XP is the easiest way to get the new HDD working on your PC now.

Hope this helps!
Bill

 

[14049752]

I have a question about the above suggestions... Isn't the boot problem when switching controllers a problem with a different hardware abstraction layer (HAL), and the system will at least start to boot but then give "Unmountable boot volume" errors?
I understand a difference in MBR would cause the system to not boot, but wouldn't the error be something like "Operating system not found" instead of "disk read error"?

I'm just asking because I'm not so convinced about my theory and want to understand fully what others are suggesting....

 

[TimeCode]

I have a question about the above suggestions... Isn't the boot problem when switching controllers a problem with a different hardware abstraction layer (HAL), and the system will at least start to boot but then give "Unmountable boot volume" errors?
I understand a difference in MBR would cause the system to not boot, but wouldn't the error be something like "Operating system not found" instead of "disk read error"?

I'm just asking because I'm not so convinced about my theory and want to understand fully what others are suggesting....

I think you're right and what I would do is put the disk in a PC, doesn't matter which one and run SpinRite on it. Then after it has finished put it back in the original PC and see if it boots.

 

[HI-TEKKSOLUTIONS]

thanks

thanks for all the input. i love technibble