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Help Boot problem

I need help!!! When I turn on my computer it runs through the bios/setup after it detects the ram, keyboard, mouse, etc. it beeps then flashes and goes to a black screen with a blinking line and stops. How do I fix this? I tried putting in a boot cd and it won't do nothing just the same thing.

Cowboy Rock
Newbie Poster
3 posts since Sep 2004
Reputation Points: 10
Solved Threads: 0
 

Basically I put this hardrive into my computer from my old one. It has windows XP on it, but the old hard drive that was in it had Win 98. what happens is I turn on the computer and it will run through setup/BIOs. It detects the mouse, keyboard, ram etc. Then it beeps one time and flashes the screen and then goes to a black screen where it has a blinking line. It will not go any farther. I've reset all the defaults in the bios/ it will not let me safe start at all. all I can do access the bios and that it.

Cowboy Rock
Newbie Poster
3 posts since Sep 2004
Reputation Points: 10
Solved Threads: 0
 

So you took an XP drive from one machine and put it in another? You can't do that, not and expect it to boot. XP is much different than 98, (although for the most part I wouldn't recommend doing that in any version of windows, unless the machines were identical).

XP is tied to the hardware it was installed to, for starters, and even if you could get it to run, it's activation would expire due to having been pulled from the original hardware it was installed/activated on.

Second, XP is notorious for not liking older hardware much, so that would make matters worse.

Sorry to deliver bad news. :(

DuncanIdaho
Posting Whiz in Training
277 posts since Aug 2004
Reputation Points: 15
Solved Threads: 6
 

You need your own copy of Windows XP. Make the necessary changes in BIOS to allow the system to boot from CD, pop the Windows Cd in the drive and reboot. Proceed to install Windows XP.

As was stated, you can't transfer a Windows XP installation from one system to another by moving the hard drive, because it won't work.

Catweazle
Grandad
Team Colleague
4,335 posts since Mar 2004
Reputation Points: 229
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This article has been dead for over three months

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