liamloveslearning Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Hi everyone, I have an old computer a friend gave me to install xp for him, the computer initially had windows 98 and was clogged full of years of rubbish, it worked okay however just extremely slow, when i got the comp i formatted the harddrive (i did this however by plugging it into my pc as it would be quicker) and then i installed xp, which on my pc worked fine and dandy; i then plugged it into his old computer expecting it to be done and working however it just will not boot! I get up until the "windows did not shut down correctly, safe mode, safe mode networking etc" but no matter what i select it stops there. Ive tried running ubuntu live cd on it just to see something yet when i get to the startup for ubuntu (run live cd, install, check cd etc) it freezes there. Ive no idea whats causing this and ive tried removing all hardware and trying it that way but nothing, the cmos battery is dead as it resets the bios each time unless i do a warm restart. any help would be amazing, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Hrmmm chances are that the drive is either not set as master or the boot table is screwed up. Not sure how you could fix the second one, but the first thing is just a physical little slidey thing on the drive. Why not just install XP on that computer? That way the boot table will be right. Might be an easier solution though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stooney Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 If you get as far as you do then the jumper settings are fine. The problem is that you installed xp on a machine using different drivers as the one you want it to work with. What you need to do is run a repair on the xp install on the computer it should work on. That will correct the necessary drivers and allow you to boot into windows and update all the other drivers properly. To do the repair you need to boot to the xp cd, press enter when it asks if you want to install/recovery console/etc, then press r when you see your install listed. (Note: I'm going off of memory, it may be slightly different, but it should be close). Just remember Recovery Console IS NOT the repair I'm talking about. The repair option is after the recovery console option. Once the repair finishes, windows should boot. I do this a bunch when replacing/upgrading motherboards and need to avoid reformatting. Also, this isn't 100%. There have been cases where it just didn't work, that's been rare for me though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Oh yeah.... I would have thought XP would be intelligent enough to realize none of the drivers work and go to default drivers.... Guess not ;p. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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