Installing XP on New Hard Drive, moving new hard drive to another computer

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silentmandie

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Dec 30, 2012
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Hey Guys.

I'm new to the world of installing Hard Drives. I installed a new one in my laptop at the beginning of the year, without any problems, but I am advising a friend on hers now. We have a problem. While trying to reinstall the OS, we are getting the message "no bootable device" even though the BIOS is picking up the hard drive as well as the external disk drive that she is using to try and to the install. My thoughts is that it's probably to do with the external hard drive and it is either not working properly or there are no drivers being picked up in order to allow it to work properly. Unfortunately, her laptop did not come with the disk drive of it's own.

So, my question is...would we be able to install the new hard drive onto a totally different computer, install the OS and then reinstall the new hard drive into her computer without any problems? My concern is over drivers and what have you.

Also, can we upgrade XP to windows 7 from an upgrade disk or do we have to have Vista?

Thanks

 
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SchizTech
It is possible to install an OS this way in principle, but Windows XP in practice has a low success rate booting on the new system, compared to 7 or even Windows 2000. Some laptops don't like booting from external disk drives. Newer versions of Windows can be installed directly from a USB flash drive though I'm not sure XP supports this. If you have Windows 7 that should install from a flash drive with no issue.

Another issue will arise with SATA support, since this is a relatively new laptop. I'd bet XP would not detect the hard drive if you do get it to boot into Setup, if you don't use F6 to install the proper SATA driver.

* the SATA driver issue could also become an obstacle in getting XP to boot if transplanted from a...
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SchizTech

SchizTech

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Jan 16, 2011
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XP doesn't get along too well with this kind of thing, in relative terms. As to an upgrade, direct upgrade from XP to 7 is not supported so you would have to do a clean install with 7.

Can you be more clear about the exact error you're getting and when you get it? IF the XP setup disk isn't detecting a hard drive after you boot from the disk and reach the disk setup phase, it may be a problem with SATA support (if you have a SATA HDD) since XP is too old to have native SATA support. IF there is an option in the BIOS in this laptop to set the SATA to IDE mode this could help.

Please clarify if you get the error at a different point, and provide the model of laptop and HDD so we could give better help.
 
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silentmandie

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Dec 30, 2012
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My friend has an HP Pavillion DM1 Notebook without a disk drive. We have replaced the HDD with a brand new HDD. We are attempting to use an external disk drive attached via USB to use the boot disk in order to install the OS onto the blank hard drive. The disk is never even being loaded before the error "no bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key" comes up. We've pressed any key, tried two different disks and nothing is working. And, yes, we have changed the boot order in the BIOS. The BIOS seems to be detecting both the new hard drive and external disk drive...but not reading the boot disks. We are going to check tomorrow to make sure that the external disk drive is working properly.

My thoughts are that the external drive and the computer are not syncing up for some reason. Whether because the disk drive doesn't work properly or because it is unusable in this process, I don't know yet. So, my main question is, can we install her new HDD into another computer, install the OS and then reinstall the HDD (now with the OS on it) into her computer?

Or, is it all completely moot because this has nothing to do with the external disk drive?
 
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SchizTech

SchizTech

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Jan 16, 2011
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It is possible to install an OS this way in principle, but Windows XP in practice has a low success rate booting on the new system, compared to 7 or even Windows 2000. Some laptops don't like booting from external disk drives. Newer versions of Windows can be installed directly from a USB flash drive though I'm not sure XP supports this. If you have Windows 7 that should install from a flash drive with no issue.

Another issue will arise with SATA support, since this is a relatively new laptop. I'd bet XP would not detect the hard drive if you do get it to boot into Setup, if you don't use F6 to install the proper SATA driver.

* the SATA driver issue could also become an obstacle in getting XP to boot if transplanted from a different laptop...
 
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