Switching from one HD to another - non-techie needs help

[jorgemv]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the world of duhhh,

I bought a 'home grown', unknown manufacturer, type of computer on ebay. Its 40gig hd was running linux Ubuntu, which I disliked because you can't add any genuine windows apps to it.

Paid someone $40 to install Windows XP Pro on it. To my dismay, everything, the desktop, taskbar, dialog boxes, fonts, websites when on the internet, etc., looked tiny and unnatural. Tried adjusting everything via Settings, but still looked lousy and unlike any Windows OS I had ever seen.

I started blaming Microsoft for unleashing such a flawed OS on us. Then, I remembered having another pc, also bought on ebay, which doesn't boot up, that was supposed to have Windows XP Pro installed.

I took a chance, never having ever ventured this far into a pc's inner workings, and switched the hard drives using the exact two connectors (I think one is called an IDE, or something, and the other one looks like a white plug -- yes, like I said above, welcome to the world of duuhhhh...

It booted up, after asking me whether I wanted to retain the previous settings, or was I more inclined to let it start up using windows. I took too long to figure out what to answer, and it just started up on its own.

Using this hd, everything looked perfect on the desktop and in other areas; this was Windows, man! So, I see that the problem with the other installation was that it came from a bootlegged copy that must have been damaged.

But, the screen kept flickering, and I was continually being informed that "new hardware" had been detected, and would I want to find and install the drivers for all this new hardware. This suggests to me that, and it's probably obvious to anyone reading this, the 'good' hard drive has the imprint of its own pc's settings. Correct?

So, here's my question, finally, after this novella: how do I switch from the 40gig hard drive with the botched up Win Xp, to this smaller hard drive (10g) with the sweet Windows I know and appreciate? Would someone be able to explain this to me in simple, non technical terms, please?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[mjc]

1. Of course Ubuntu won't run any 'genuine' Windows apps...it is Linux, not Windows.

2. The install to the 40 GB drive that was messed up probably was just missing the proper video card drivers. Now, whether or not that install was also messed up because it was a 'bootlegged' copy is another matter.

3. XP is not designed to be easily transfered between machines...so you are very lucky the install on the 10 GB drive even ran at all. And, yes, it has all the drivers/settings for the original hardware. Plus it is also set for that hardware. On the new hardware it will need to 'Activated' again...which will most likely require a phone call to MS or it will shut down. (You should have 30 days to do this...)

Find out the brand of the hard drives...then you can download the manufacturer's utilities. These will allow you to transfer the good drive to the other one...

[jorgemv]

Thank you kindly for replying.

From what you tell me, it seems to me that the path of least resistance, or the easiest way for me, would be to first try to locate and download some updated video card drivers and see if that solves the unappealing look of the desktop, etc.

Can you tell me whether by using the Device Manager I could find out what video card is being used with the 40g drive? If so, yes, dumb question, where in Device Mgr. exactly would I look for the video card type I have? I'm almost sure it would be too much to expect that it's just called a 'video card.'

I suppose I could just take it out of the motherboard and look. But, for some reason, the slots on the motherboard where these devices go (modem especially) are not grabbing properly. Since there's not DSL in my area, installing a new modem was impossible as a result - had to opt for an exernal one to connect to the Net. So, I'm hesitant to pull anything out, for fear it
might not catch again when reinstalling, then I'd be up the creek...

thanks

[Paul Komski]

Video Cards once installed are seen under Display Adapters but if the drivers have not been installed its not so easy to get an answer from Device Manager since the native VGA drivers will be all that would normally be listed - and if it is an AGP card the mobo's AGP drivers would also need to have been installed for Display Adapters to show at all in the Device Manager. Do you have AGP, PCI, PCIe or On-board Video. Your are likely to need the mainboard drivers whatever and the specific drivers for the card in question if there is a card installed. They are not the hardest components to identify by just looking at them.

[Sylvander]

The [FREE] #1-TuffTEST-Lite (http://www.tufftest.com/free.htm) bootable floppy will test your hardware including quite comprehensive tests of the display setup.
It doesn't use drivers, but its own code that accesses the hardware directly, so only faulty hardware can cause a failure to function.
You startup with the floppy in the drive, and just sit back and watch it test, unless you want to intervene.

To find details of your video card you could run Aida16 [item 3] on the 1st menu of the "Emergency Boot CD" [EBCD].
Aida is amazingly comprehensive in listing details of the PC's innards.
If you have trouble downloading the EBCD "ebcd-0.6.1-pro-sfx.exe" file from the website, let me know and I'll upload a copy of the "EBCD061P.ISO" file to a hosting site for you to download here.

1. How to make a free “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498
This makes it easier to boot a chosen drive [particularly the one holding the EBCD].

2. How to make a free EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
This has a number of useful utilities included including "Image" [for DOS, by Terabyte] & "File Manager".

I'd have thought that your display problem would be fixed if you could find the right configuration settings to choose.

[Paul Komski]

Digging out unidentified devices or devices not shown in Device Manager has long been a thorny enough problem, when trying to identify and obtain the device drivers.

A surprising amount of good information can simply be obtained from System Information by running msinfo32 from the run box under WinXP and similar.

Even more information can be dragged from the hardware directly using the DDK application Devcon (small quick download), which can be obained in a self-extracting file from a link in the MSKB Q311272 (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311272).

Devcon (usually the 32 and not the 64 bit version) will reveal both names and hardware IDs such that if you cannot identify the device directly then the PNP ID should allow you to find it on the internet, where there are databases of both Vendor (VEN_???) and Device (DEV_???) ids. It is basically how the Unidentified Device program works (when it works and when it has the relevant id in its database).

One needs to run devcom from a command prompt under an NT-based OS along with the relevant parameters.

If not familiar with command prompts then the following single line of text
devcon hwids * > hwids.txt
can be saved from notepad as hwids.bat and sited wherever it has been saved inside the devcon/i386 folder (and then beside the relevant devcon.exe file). Running hwids.bat thereafter will create a hwids.txt file in the same directory containing just about all the raw hardware information you are likely to need.

devcon /? should list all the options.