Getting info off old HD

I am trying to get all my music off my old hard drive and onto discs or my external hard drive. The problem is that my old computer doesent work, it will turn on and boot up but will shut off after a couple minutes. So i took the hard drive out of the old computer and hooked it to my new computer but my new computer doesent even show that it the old hard drive is hooked up. My new computer is running vista and my old computer was xp. Does that make a difference? is there any way I can retrieve my stuff? Any help would be appreciated. By the way i tried unplugging the new hard drive and just booting off the old, and leaving the new plugged in and both ways dont work. By not working I mean the computer cant find the hard drive at all let alone boot from it. I also have tried all the jumper settings for the old hard drive, the new one is sata the old is ide.

The model number of the old hard drive is: Seagate 20GB st20410a
My new motherboard is an asus p5b deluxe

 

First, yes Vista should be able to read a drive from an XP machine (both use the NTFS file system, for now).

I can't say for sure why the machine would not detect it, but one thing you might try is buying an enclosure, and using the old internal drive as a second external.

 

Is the old HD showing in BIOS and have you set it to Master. Also have you looked in Disk Management to see if there is a reference there of it. If so choose 'Import Foreign Disk' ... you say you tried All jumper settings have you tried with no Jumper ?? Some Eide HD's require no Jumper if being used as Master.