Installing XP on a IDE hard disk, off a DVD?

It's a pretty simple problem, actually. I'm trying to install XP on my sister's hard disk which needs a clean install. However my computer's hard disk is SATA... so I tried this. Unplugged my current hard disk from the SATA and plugged my sister's on the IDE cable.

But... when I try and boot from CD (or, rather, DVD), my BIOS can't see the IDE hard disk nor my DVD drive. It oly sees my Ethernet Controller, Floppy and Removable Media. It's weird because I can hear them - both the hard disk and the DVD in the drive are turning...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi rovelius, I believe you have to make a change in teh BIOS to set it to boot from another HDD.

However, this may not matter because if you are planning on installing it in your box then swapping the HDD out to your sisters box, i dont think that will work [i may be wrong though, perhaps somone else could give an opinion?] as windows will set itself up for your hardware.

Why dont you just do the install on her HDD while it is in her PC? [if you dont mind me asking ]

Q

 

Correct ~Q~. That is why you see "Windows is checking your Systems Configuration" when doing an install.
Also, some companies,like Dell, have stuff on their disks just for their own machines.

 

I have installed XP Pro on an IDE HDD and put it into many different pcs and worked fine, allthough windos does look for your hardware config, it only does so to make the drivers etc for that hardware work at boot, there is generic drivers for just about 99% of all hardware installed with windows.

AS far as Dell etc etc yes those are proprietary called OEM installs, the only difference is the actual install cd itself looks for a certain manufacturer chip on the main board to allow installation so you dont take your supplied oem disk and install it on the competitions machine, but, if you have any windows disk it will also install just fine.

Ergo, you should have no problems doing this, but as stated above, you will have to enter the bios and set the new drive as the boot drive, and do make sure the jumpers are set to master/single, or just master whatever the case may be, set your dvdrom to be the first boot device and you should be off and rollin

 

That's what I would do but my BIOS doesn't even see my drive nor the hard disk.

I would install it from her box but I can't because she doesn't have a DVD drive. I tried taking out mine from my box's but I wasn't able to, I just don't see how I'm supposed to. It's a HP Compaq dc7100, if anyone had a guide on this box...

 

No offense rovelius dude, but you do realise this means that actual little pins/connectors need to be moved don't you?

 

yes right you are ~Q~, I shoulda been a little clearer on that

What i was suggesting is the bios may not see the drive if the jumpers, are not set correctly, unlike sata drives that usually dont need jumpers set, ide does in order to tell the bios which drive is master, which is slave so on.

Check your hdd manufacturer's site for correct jumper settings to be sure and try again.

Personally, I just reset the bios, I always keep a reference of my bios settings in a book so it only takes minutes to reset it all. This is a when all else fails to get the bios to see the drive.