Remove the data cable from the original hard drive and install it on the new drive, that you wish to make the primary C:/.
Then check that the system boots to this drive. If it does, then reconnect the original hard drive as the secondary, use XP's disk management to partition and format it.
Because the original drive is the system drive, the computer will not even boot without it hooked up, I've tried. XP writes some files to that drive and if the pc doesn't see the system drive the it will not see any drives.. I've gone into the bios setup and it shows no hard drives. Disk management in XP will not let me do anything to the drive that Windows calls the system drive.
Hookup the old drive on the end of the cable, leaving the new drive UNHOOKED.
Reboot with the XP CD in the drive and the CD as the boot device, then pick the INSTALL path, then pick REPAIR. Once XP is running smoothly, hookup the old drive on the middle of the connector, pull off anything you need datawise (not programs), and then format it.
Because the original drive is the system drive, the computer will not even boot without it hooked up, I've tried. XP writes some files to that drive and if the pc doesn't see the system drive the it will not see any drives.. I've gone into the bios setup and it shows no hard drives. Disk management in XP will not let me do anything to the drive that Windows calls the system drive.
Sorry to take so long to reply but I've been out of town for two weeks. I have tried to repair the original copy of windows w/ the cd. It wont work. Maybe I have not explained my problem clear enough.
My Dimension 4600 came with a 60 gig hard drive. When I filled it I installed a WD 160 gig drive. One day XP went nuts and I could not run any exe files. I searched for a solution or virus and found none. Somehow I lost the link to run exe . All exe files changed to .lnk. The drive always boots but will not run programs. I loaded XP on the 160 gig drive and copied all the data from the 60 gig and tried to format the 60. Windows sees the 60 as the system drive because it still has the original copy of XP on it and will not format it. If I unhook it from the PC Windows does not see any drives even though the 160 is hooked up ( master OR slave). I want to make the 160 the system drive so I can format the 60. How do I accomplish this?
shesagordie
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January 22nd, 2006 19:00
rickmktg
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January 22nd, 2006 20:00
petrotech
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January 22nd, 2006 20:00
petrotech
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February 4th, 2006 12:00
Sorry to take so long to reply but I've been out of town for two weeks. I have tried to repair the original copy of windows w/ the cd. It wont work. Maybe I have not explained my problem clear enough.
My Dimension 4600 came with a 60 gig hard drive. When I filled it I installed a WD 160 gig drive. One day XP went nuts and I could not run any exe files. I searched for a solution or virus and found none. Somehow I lost the link to run exe . All exe files changed to .lnk. The drive always boots but will not run programs. I loaded XP on the 160 gig drive and copied all the data from the 60 gig and tried to format the 60. Windows sees the 60 as the system drive because it still has the original copy of XP on it and will not format it. If I unhook it from the PC Windows does not see any drives even though the 160 is hooked up ( master OR slave). I want to make the 160 the system drive so I can format the 60. How do I accomplish this?