Weird Hard Problem - Help

Here goes nothing. I had an eMachine that suddennly died. Diagnostics advised that the motherboard was gone. So smart me bought a barebones unit and installed the Hard drive from the eMachine into the new box. Well that didn't work because I had to re-verify the OS (XP Media) with Mother Microsoft. They tell me I can't do move the HDD to a new machine, have to buy another board...go figure. Didn't I just do that!! Any way thnking if I placed the old drive in the slave position I could get at my data, (no I didn't have a recent backup) tons of family pics and music under the My Documents Folder, under Owner, with the documents and settings directory. Well to my surprise the "My Docs" folder is inaccesible.

Do any of you have a clue as to why?

The old drive still has the OS on it and I am running off XP Pro.

Also the old drive, even though in the slave position has drive letter "C". The new system's boot drive is showing "L". It stays as "L" even when I remove the slave.

So my friends there are three questions;

1. How do I change my drive letters to reflect "C" now "L" as boot?

2. How do I change my slave drive from "C" to whatever?

3. How do I gain access to the "My Documents" folder on the slave drive?

Thanks in advance for your patience and efforts to assist.

BT1333

 

you can try these steps to gain access to the folder(s)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421


as for the lettering problem. Go to the control panel/adminstrative tools/computer management. select storage/disk management, and you should see all of your drives from there. Right-click on a drive/partition to change the drive letters.

 

If I could politely add a comment thesmokingun .. he will need to change the NOW ''C'' letter first to whatever as if not it will cause confusion. So bt1333 change your now showing ''C'' to what you want then change the now ''L'' to C. That should then boot with your new HD when OS installed. Of course make sure you have the Master/Slave Jumper setup correct. To be double sure when you have changed the assigned letter reboot then when you are getting to DOS screen as you will have no OS installed yet then power off. Unhitch your now 'Slave'' Start up with your OS in ROM. Run that and and reboot and see if it all is well, power off and hitch your slave drive, reboot and you should then be able to access your old C drive. Good Luck and let us know how you progressed. If you still have probs check your Hard Drive boot order in BIOS.

 

Personally I would recommend downloading and burning ubuntu to a CD and booting from that to save all the drive letter hassle, as if you change the drive letter of the drve with the OS on it you are likely to muck everything up.

Gude to booting from a Lunix liveCD here: http://www.linuxfortravelers.com/ubuntu-live-cd-guide

 

yeah, you know what? the boot loader might get all messed up. You might run into a problem after changing the boot drive. It's an easy fix, if you know what you're doing.

 

I want to thank all of you for your responses. I think I need to at least restate the problem for clarity. Simply put: Both L and old "C" have OS installed (different versions of XP). Drive L is the real boot drive in Bios and is set as Master with Slave present. Old "C" is slave and is jumpered as slave. Old "C" is larger and has files on it that I want to recovery from the "My Documents Folder" under the directory of Documents and Settings. However, the folder "My Documents" will not allow me access. The smokinggun's answer of 2-22-10 @ 8:23 appears to be very plausible. I will investigate prior to clicking any keys.

Thanks again all. Will surely let you know.

BT1333