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curry199

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dead computer ..good hard drive. how can I boot to it?

I have a bad motherboard in a laptop but, the hard drive seems ok.  i was able to copy data off of it.  My problem is there is a program on the old drive that we need and there is no disk to reload from anymore.  What I want to do is boot off the old drive somehow.  Is that possible?
i tried putting the drive in another older notebook but, it just bluescreens.  Am I wasting my time???
thanks
Dave
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jacobstewart
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p2v the drive and boot it as a virtual machine.

Here is a disk to vhd converter http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Sun virtual box will work well to spin up the vm. https://www.virtualbox.org/
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curry199

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Jacob
so you are saying I can attach the old hd to a computer running p2v software and boot the old os?
Dave
p2v the drive and boot it as a virtual machine.

If the drive is bluescreening then P2V'ing it won't do any good.  He'll just have a corrupt physical and virtual drive then.  Plus that is overkill for what he is asking.

You can try several things to repair your hard drive so it's at least bootable and able to be swapped into another computer/laptop.

You could try hooking it up as a secondary drive in another computer and running check disk on it.  If it finds any errors it will repair them.  If that works then load it in another machine and go for it. (use chkdsk /r)

If you just need the data from it, then put it in another computer again as a secondary disk and browse to that hard drive once inside of Windows and copy the data somewhere else.

If you need the application, this may get trickier, but trying my first method above to fix/repair any issues with the disk, then P2V'ing would be an option.
yes you will p2v the drive creating a vhd.  then boot the disk image using sun virtual box.  This will run the old computer as a virtual machine
The original problem was a failed motherboard. The drive is blue screening in a different laptop for drives reasons.  a p2v should be fine as long as swapping it to the different computer did not cause os corruption.
It's bluescreening because it doesn't recognize drivers for components if he just throws it in another computer.
I will try both suggestions and get back to you....Thanks guys!
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jeffiepoo
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Plug it into a different machine and try a repair install. Then install the new drivers. This has worked ~60% of the time for me in these situations.

Just as I stated... thank you for reiterating.
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What version of XP is installed in the hard drive? Retail, volume or OEM?


If you are going for a repair reinstall you'll need the right installation CD (and back up this drive as an image before messing with it.)

As everyone has already intimated the blue screen is most likely due to XP expecting to find the original motherboard and peripherals. In the new machine the hard drive install can't communicate with the hardware as it doesn't contaain the right drivers.

The repair reinstall erases key system files and replaces them and is different from the repair using chkdsk that xBouchards describes.

This is why you'll need the right XP CD to carry out the repair.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Windows/XP/A_3218-XP-OEM-and-the-repair-reinstallation-a-cautionary-tale.html

Virtualising the drive would work but you won't be able to virtualise the original hardware environment as the comptuer will not boot, so you're back into the blue screen just in a virtual environment.
what you can try is locating a laptop with the same cpu and chipset, and boot the drive in there ; that should normally work out ok
you could also make an adaptive image to other hardware :
http://www.paragon-software.com/business/adaptiverestore/index.html
Jeff this worked!  It was the simplest solution to try first.  The other suggestions got me thinking about virtual stuff.  i ordered a book and started learning more about it.
Anyway...thanks to all.
Thanks! XBouchardx - a repair install is different than a chkdsk with the repair flag.