How do I ?

[Ex-Bay]

The video card works great, and I've fitted the hard drives from my old HP computer into the tower box.
The HP had XP on it and it worked - until something blew up.

So the Hard drives are in the tower box: Wiring sorted out, new fan etc.. The machine boots up from a DOS floppy, the BIOS is set as best I can make/ understand it (it knows the drives are present).

But I cannot get anything to run from the DVDs: Either of them.
BIOS knows they exist.
Despite MSCDEX, I cannot get at them and herein lies the problem. I have a CD with the software on it.

Attempts to reset the boot order have met with no noticeable change. It will not find stuff on the CD (cannot find a drive !).

How do I tell the machine to look at the CD and get working?

Machine:
Athlon 64, 2Gb RAM, 140MB (60 + 80) IDE HDDs.

 

[steve_k243]

The video card works great, and I've fitted the hard drives from my old HP computer into the tower box.
The HP had XP on it and it worked - until something blew up.

So the Hard drives are in the tower box: Wiring sorted out, new fan etc.. The machine boots up from a DOS floppy, the BIOS is set as best I can make/ understand it (it knows the drives are present).

But I cannot get anything to run from the DVDs: Either of them.
BIOS knows they exist.
Despite MSCDEX, I cannot get at them and herein lies the problem. I have a CD with the software on it.

Attempts to reset the boot order have met with no noticeable change. It will not find stuff on the CD (cannot find a drive !).

How do I tell the machine to look at the CD and get working?

Machine:
Athlon 64, 2Gb RAM, 140MB (60 + 80) IDE HDDs.

Check the jumper settings, the options being master, slave and cable select. If the HDD on a chan is set to master, set the CD to slave and vicky vercia.

 

[Ex-Bay]

Check the jumper settings, the options being master, slave and cable select. If the HDD on a chan is set to master, set the CD to slave and vicky vercia.

There are two optical drives on the secondary channel and two HDDs on the primary. The jumper setting seem OK (although whether I have the right HDD as the master remains to be seen.)

I tried booting from my XP disk; it worked.
But what I want to do is to run a different disk (XPPE: which has a DOS batch file). It has the usual Start.bat, three WIN51 files and a huge folder i386.

If I can get this machine to work somehow, then I'll think about a kosher copy of XP. But I do not need a spare; not at Bill Gates' price, anyway.

How can I get the drives to register in DOS ?

 

[Ex-Bay]

Anyone know a reliable place to get XP-Performance edition ?
I've tried several, but no go.

 

[steve_k243]

Have you tried swapping the HDD's over? IE Just the IDE cable.

 

[Teh Wal]

Can you clarify something mate? So what you have done is lift 2 HDDs from a U/S computer (the HP) and simply fitted them into a new tower? And you haven't installed XP, you just hoped that the existing installation of XP (from the HP machine) will cope with the new hardware?

XP may well run but it wont really have a clue what the heck is going on because nothing (hardware wise) is in the right place (in the registry). The drivers installed on the HDD will not match any of the hardware. Everything needs installing, from the operating system upwards, to set up the correct pathways for instructions and processes.
In effect what you've done is taken a sheeps brain and plonked it into a cows head... and now you're wondering why the cow is stumbling around the field looking a bit confused.

 

[Ex-Bay]

Can you clarify something mate? So what you have done is lift 2 HDDs from a U/S computer (the HP) and simply fitted them into a new tower? And you haven't installed XP, you just hoped that the existing installation of XP (from the HP machine) will cope with the new hardware?

XP may well run but it wont really have a clue what the heck is going on because nothing (hardware wise) is in the right place (in the registry). The drivers installed on the HDD will not match any of the hardware. Everything needs installing, from the operating system upwards, to set up the correct pathways for instructions and processes.
In effect what you've done is taken a sheeps brain and plonked it into a cows head... and now you're wondering why the cow is stumbling around the field looking a bit confused.

Sort of.
I've lifted two HDDs from the busted HP. The drives are both OK and had XP thereon. I know that I cannot expect XP to work (that would be asking too much of uSoft), so I thought: "DOS boot." Sure enough, the thing boots in DOS but cannot find anything by way of DVD/CD drives (I'm not even sure it found the C & D drives). The idea was to get it to play (huh!) a CD I have upon which is XP-PE (XP Performance edition)which would give me a platform upon which to work.

The cow is more than confused; it's gone MAD !

 

[Scaley brat]

Sort of.
I've lifted two HDDs from the busted HP. The drives are both OK and had XP thereon. I know that I cannot expect XP to work (that would be asking too much of uSoft), so I thought: "DOS boot." Sure enough, the thing boots in DOS but cannot find anything by way of DVD/CD drives (I'm not even sure it found the C & D drives). The idea was to get it to play (huh!) a CD I have upon which is XP-PE (XP Performance edition)which would give me a platform upon which to work.

The cow is more than confused; it's gone MAD !

No mate, it's just walked into it's neighbours house. XP doesn't recognise your hardware and so assumes you stole it. If your BIOS can't see your CD drive you are in a bit of a pickle. Install one HDD on one cable and the CD drive on the other, that might let you install XP at which point you can annoy it with a second hard drive. Like Wal said, check the jumpers, it might save you some time.

 

[Ex-Bay]

BIOS knows about all drives.
The jumpers are in the correct order (I guess; there is a Master & a Slave on each IDE channel).

I have managed to put a copy of XP from my WGA disk, but I rather hopes I could fit one of those "fixed" things (Like the "Performance" edition), rather than buying another copy of XP.

 

[gray]

I assume you have a Windows boot floppy disc or can get one ?

Try booting off the floppy if it has one, and let it install all the drivers, and then see if it sees the DVD drives ?

What boot order have you got in the BIOS ?

Try installing only one device one each IDE, one HDD and one DVD drive and make them masters.

Hopefully what blew up in your othe rcomputer didn't take out the HDD controller boards too !

Nice rainy day for a play around (up here anyway at the moment!)

Gray