Revived dead computer but...

I bought a junk HP Pavilion a1020n and have it running again. Although it runs fine with a SATA hard drive, I cannot get an ATA hard drive to work in it. Both hard drives are exact copies of XP (copied from ATA to SATA with partition commander) and have xp OS. The ATA hd gives improper boot device error. All responses are appreciated.

 

Evidently the ATA is working, since you copied from it to the SATA. Have you checked the jumpers on the ATA (forgot to change it to Master after copying OS across to SATA?)? I suppose you have, but one needs to ask.

Can you boot from the ATA on any other computer?

Have you tried a boot in Safe Mode?

 

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, jumpers were correct. Tried hd in another computer and got another problem. Lots of posts for "Cannot read disk- press con,alt,del to reboot. You can do that forever with the same error over and over. Tried clean install but that just got the same error. Thought hard drive was toasted but as a last effort, booted with Partition Commander disk and was able to delete all partitions. Had problem with cross referenced files and could not access hard drive any other way (I think). Then clean install was cleanly installed! :cool

 

So are you saying that it's all good now?

 

Yup, all good now. The hd was so messed up windows did not even begin to load- only had a second to get into bios. Partition Commander is the only cd I ever paid cash for and seems to have saved me and my hd.

 

Excellent. Good work.