Installing an HDD from a Gateway to another computer

Hello all. I've just registered here so I'm the new guy! But my question is...why can't another brand computer see a fully operational Win XP Pro loaded hard drive from a Gateway machine? I've heard that Gateway "brands" their hard drives so that they can't be used in another computer but theirs. Is this true? And if so, is there a way to crack it so that it can be used in an HP, IBM, etc? The hard drive is a Quantim Fireball EX 6.4 AT - 3.5 eries C/H/S 13328/15/63. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

You should be able to access the files if i is installed in another computer, unless it has a Windows 98 OS, which can't read from a NTFS formatted drive. You can't use it as a boot drive, because won't have the proper drivers to run in another computer. If you are looking for 'cracks', this is the wrong place.

 

I'm not looking for anything illegal...just a way to get it to work on another machine. When installed on another machine, all I get is start-up, then a black screen with a blinking curser. I can, however access set up but that's as far as I can get.

 

There is nothing you can do to boot from the drive, except maybe a repair reinstall (no guarantees it will work). You will then need to reactivate the XP Pro anyway, because of the hardware changes. You might as well format the HD and do a fresh install of the OS, unless there are files you don't want to lose even with a repair install there may be problems. You can install it as a second drive (set the jumper to slave) and be able to access it's files, but it won't work as a main drive in a different computer properly.

 

Cause of different chipsets/drivers/hardware differances.
You must reformat and reload OS (clean install)


It would not be worth trying to crack, simply easier to just reinstall OS.