Alright, this should be an easy one

NeciFiX

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My moms' computer is way too slow to operate anymore. She had a full copy of Windows XP on her system, and it took at least a half hour for anything to properly load. I pulled out my old PC, a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 w/ Hyperthreading, 3 GB of RAM, AGP 8x, good enough to handle XP with ease and do all the things she needs to do with relative speed.

However, I'm having a small issue with the hard drives. The original hard drive that was in there is all my old data, it's packed completely full of crap. I took my moms' hard drive out and plugged it in, however, it keeps booting into my original hard drive since it's set as the "primary drive". Both drives have XP Home on them.

I unplugged my old hard drive and kept hers plugged in, but, it will not load into Windows, and it is still set as the "Primary Slave Drive" or something like that. My old HDD is a SATA hard drive, hers is an IDE.

I want both hard drives in the computer, so, if I ever need my old data, I can go and get it, but, at the same time, hers needs to be the dominant hard drive and mine merely a catalyst, so it loads into her hard drive and she can do all she needs. I'm not exactly sure how to do this, as I've never tried to do it before.

Any help would be appreciated. Will this simply not work?

Thanks!

NeciFiX
 
Did you go into the BIOS and change it to boot from her IDE drive?
Why not just put your HDD in there but just simply not plug it in to complicate things and waste power?
 
Did you go into the BIOS and change it to boot from her IDE drive?
Why not just put your HDD in there but just simply not plug it in to complicate things and waste power?

I want access to my old pictures and files.

I tried to do that, it wasn't on the list.

I tried unplugging my old HDD, and now it won't re-detect it [the computer]. It also refuses to detect the second hard drive. I tried enabling them in the BIOS. What the hell is going on?!
 
I can hear one at least, so, yeah, it seems to me like the hard drives didn't spontaneously fry out [what are the chances both HDD's fry out at the same exact time?]

Should I reset the CMOS?
 
I can hear one at least, so, yeah, it seems to me like the hard drives didn't spontaneously fry out [what are the chances both HDD's fry out at the same exact time?]

Should I reset the CMOS?

Don't see what the CMOS would have to do with it.
Wait you're saying one drive is SATA and one is IDE, am I correct?
 
Yes. And neither are being read correctly. I can't tell whether the SATA one is running or not, but, the IDE one has always been a screecher and I can hear it distinctly.
 
The one he is trying to boot from is IDE, from what I understand. He is attempted to use the HDD from a different computer to boot in a another. It's a low chance that it will work. But to help, It's important to make sure that the jumper is set correctly on the IDE drive. SATA didn't feature MS/SL/CS prongs because the MCP started taking care of that through BIOS. Most IDE's use a J50 prong style which is 2 rows of 5 [:::::]. If it looks like that, chances are it's a Western Digital and the jumper needs to be on the second column from the left. (going vertical) It should look like
[:|:::]

Also set (in BIOS) the IDE to boot first, if you haven't already.
 
It's a Maxton or something.

So this was a bad idea?

Neither HDD's are still being read, would fixing the jumper settings make them detectable? That doesn't seem like it'd fix my (immediate) problem.
 
Possibly conflicting primary boot? Take your SATA drive out and set the IDE to Cable Select jumper setting. Make sure you haven't disabled boot the hard drive in BIOS.
 
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