itgolfer
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Swapping Out Hard Drive - System Reboots
We have a user that has gotten a receipt printer that connects to the PC via a serial cable. The PC she has doesn't have a serial connection so I was going to just give here a spare PC that does have it. Instead of having to reinstall all of her programs and configure her settings, I was wanting to just swap the hard drives. Both PCs are Dells, although not the same model, and both of the hard drives are Western Digital. The current one is a WD2500AAJS and the spare one is a WD5000AAKX. After putting the original hard drive in the new PC, it boots to the Windows 7 splash screen but freezes after a few seconds and reboots. Is there something I can do to make this hard drive work in the new PC or do I need to reinstall everything on the new PCs hard drive?
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ASKER
Thanks for the responses. That's what I was assuming but was hoping for a quicker solution.
The only thing you can try is BIOS and possibly more drivers as we suggested. There is no other solution except for reinstalling.
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Actually the problem you get is missing driver. Though both machines look like identical the BIOS settings of them could be different. For example one has AHCI mode enabled and its driver installed and the other one uses IDE compatible mode.
If this is so then your system will get BSOD when trying to boot from a drive which was taken from another system.
To avoid this go to BIOS and check if you can enable IDE Compatible mode. Most Windows installations have generic driver for this mode.
If this is so then your system will get BSOD when trying to boot from a drive which was taken from another system.
To avoid this go to BIOS and check if you can enable IDE Compatible mode. Most Windows installations have generic driver for this mode.
ASKER
I wasn't even thinking about just getting a serial PCI card. I bought one this morning and that will fix the issue. Thanks everyone.
Good deal. When it comes time to replace those receipt printers, get USB ones! :)
You generally cannot do this. Try updating BIOS in the new machine to see if that facilitates the move. If not, you will likely have to reinstall.