Ye Olde Hard Drive Follow

I have a computer that refuses to boot up. If you keep pushing the power button eventually it fires up, but it could be on the third try, usually it's on the third week. It's not so much of a problem if you never turn it off, but occasionally it crashes. It crashed again, and I finally ran out of patience trying to get it to restart and bought another computer. Unfortunately, there is data on the old computer that I would like to save.

So I took the old computer to the repair shop. They have determined that the motherboard in the computer has died and at this point it would be cheaper to buy another case and a different motherboard than trying to replace the original. That is going to run me $550+ which is way out of my budget atm.

I've researched around on the internet and it seems like it should be possible for me to install the old hard drive in my new computer as a slave drive and retrieve my data from it. Does anyone have any experience with something like this? The system hardware is fairly similar, but the new one has Vista and the old one was Windows XP. If that's a big deal I have a much older computer that also uses Windows XP and a couple of 4gig flash drives I can use to move the stuff to the new computer. If anyone can give me some tips or point me in the right direction, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

Wordaen, The Pumpkin King, you don't need software to slave a drive and it seems you are taking him/her down an expensive path for something very simple. Nothing personal however I prefer the free solution which is easy and takes at most 15minutes even for someone with little computer experience.

You can slave your old Windows XP drive using an IDE cable then just setting the jumpers. The place where you can get into trouble is if you set your Windows XP system to secure your information which would lock you out of your files however that is easily dodged around.

If you don't have security set on your old drive then follow these directions on dual booting a Vista/XP system and you are set to go.

http://www.theeldergeekvista.com/vista_dual_boot_installation.htm

If that link does not help simply google "Dual Boot Vista and XP" and you will literally get hundreds of hits on the process. It hasn't changed much from the old days outside of Vista no longer using a boot.ini file which makes the task just a little different.

I also do computer work for a living however I tend to not use all the fancy applications as they tend to do more harm then good in the end. I prefer to look at the problem and find the solution which will not only cost nothing or near nothing but also be a learning experience so that I can document it and know if something breaks with it "I know how to fix it because I did it not a program".

That should get you up and running, and if you ever want to migrate your applications there most certainly is instructions for that as well out in the world. Just shoot me a PM if you need any other help, I do this stuff for a living and fix hundreds of computers daily so I have a few tricks up my sleeve need the occasion arise.


Decided to edit this post to include a few other links for instructions after reading thru the others they weren't the best.
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

Useful information here as well;
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=539042&st=0


Edited, Nov 9th 2007 6:17am by xXBijiontXx

Sorry that I wasn't clear. My understanding is that the MB is the only thing that failed. I want to take the hard drive out of the failed computer and stick it into one of my others so I can move the songs, pictures and documents I have on that hard drive to a hard drive in a different computer. I don't even want the installation to be permanent. I don't need 500Gigs of storage. I just want to move my stuff off of it.

My only real concern is that the new computer has Vista while the failed one has XP. I have a much older computer that uses XP but it's a signifigant downgrade from the hardware in the failed computer and I have heard that can cause problems.

At this time money is a concern. I'm already in to the computer guy for $45 dollars for the diagnostic. For another $60 he said he could move all the files off that computer onto another. But I'm cheap and real good at following directions, so if it's something I can do myself, that money would be better spent somewhere else.

I know several of you guys do this professionally, so any tips or information you can give is appreciated. Thanks again.

wow defaulted for trying to help, I am done offering any type of help.