Hi,

Just a quick question - I have a HDD that was in Packard 2, 20GB - now I want it in PC 3 (a Gateway) but whilst it was in PB2 I installed XP O.S and SP2 - it worked perfectly in there!

Moved it along to the Gateway - and absoloutely nothing - turn it on - detects the IDE drives - and the screen changes to the lighter black as if it is about to say "Winows XP" but nothing - it turns to that screen and nothing. Even when changing it to the first boot device in the BIOS. Now someone says it's the drivers as it was in a PC with a different type of mobo and another says "pi** about in the BIOS" and it should then work.

Also, when putting in the 98 CD - as that's what it was originally on it's other HDD I thought i'll try uninstalling XP and putting 98 on it however, you get presented with "Boot from HDD" (stlll nothing) and "boot from cd" (it whizzes round - and nothing!

Is it a dead HDD?

Any ideas?

Cheers
Alex

You're going to need to reinstall an OS on it like XP - it might be possible to get the current installation you have working but it will take serious ******* about with drivers to get it running properly.

Best thing to do is wipe and start again - just make sure you don't delete all your documents or whatever else you have on there - back it up from the Packard Bell first. Then run fdisk and fdisk /mbr to get rid of any Packard Bell tattoo/hidden sector crap. Or if you boot from an XP cd it should be able to fdisk and format for you.

All the HDD that was in the Packard has on it is XP and SP2 - no docs or anything - v now I've just popped the XP CD into the machine - and it seems to be OK - but wouldn't that mean that they'll be 2 installations of XP - or should it come up with delete this installation of xp and create a new one?

Ta
Alex

OK, it's reinstalled XP onto that HDD - but surely you can just move the HDD from computer to computer no problems - I could from PB to PB no problems at all - s'ppose as they were both NECs.


Also, on a second note - if I want to install another 2 HDDs into this day-day PC (another PB) [there are 2 PBs and 1 Gateway, one of the PBs is going to be sold], yes... if I want to install another 2 HDDs - then for 1 I would just pop the plastic IDE in and the other Y connector power supply in and but what about for HDD no 3 ? There won't be any power supplies left - also there are no IDE things left on the motherboard. Only 1 - where they expect you to use the slave IDE connector and the spare power supply - so how would I install the third HDD?

Cheers
Alex

You can't just swap the HDD with XP on it and expect it to start - the registry has all the settings for the old hardware - like I said you can get it to work if you know what you are doing but it's a headache and not worth it if you have an XP cd to hand - it's something you'd do if you didn't have access to an XP cd....

On top of that PB's have something called a Tattoo (or hidden sector, or whatever they are calling it now) which stores information in unused areas on both the HDD and mobo - the Tattoo program uses this when trying to reinstall from a PB master cd to check if it's a valid PB computer. Microsoft make them do it as part of the OEM agreement... This is actually pretty irrelevant in this case though - dunno why I've just typed it..

If you are installing another HDD then yes you basically do just plug in the IDE and power cables and fix into a bay - the only other thing is you need to set the jumper on the back of the drive to either master or slave (there should be one of each on each channel) - if it's a new(ish) PC then you may be able to get away with setting it to CS (cable select) in which the PC should assign them itself but it's not 100% reliable - check to see what jumper setting the original one or just trial and error. Remember if the drive hasn't been used before you'll need to partition it first (fdisk or the like).

As for HDD number 3 - if there aren't enough power cables then either get a y-splitter if the power supply is rated high enough (you may find you have reached the limit of the PSU - highly likely with a PB as they don't come with particularly powerful PSU's) or get yourself another PSU and fit that - should find there's plenty of connectors on a decent PSU. If you have used both master and slave on all your IDE channels then you'll need to either sacrifice a drive or get yourself a PCI controller with extra IDE channels on or another mobo that supports more channels than your current one......

Bit long winded but hopefully makes sense.... :)

Ah right, cheers for the info there.

Alex