hi there

i am fairly new to the internal workings of a pc so bear with me...

i have just recently bought a new machine, it came with no operating system.

i have an old samsung 160gb drive from my old pc which works fine and has my xp home and apps/files on it.

i have put my old HD into the case and linked it to the mobo

on startup [as expected] windows detects a massive hardware change and will only run in safe mode

driver installation seems to have no effect.

i was thinking of installing xp onto my new hd

my question is.

can i run and boot xp off my new drive and still access my old hd to get my games/programs/video
or would i have to back it up to an external drive then format it

any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
sorry if i didnt get all the technical details right. im still learning

You need to purchace XP and will also have to reinstall all your programs...Once up and running you can slave the old drive to copy single files off of it.

You cannot do what you did.

The old PC hard drive has OS and compatible drives for your old system and will not run properly. The critical drivers are the ones for your motherboard, and if it has on-board video card (video card built-into the motherboard) you have a bigger problem.

Do a fresh install of WinXP SP2, I would highly suggest the Pro version.

As far as your games and other applications. Unless your a real techie you are stuck with manually reinstalling all these on your new PC. The only thing you can do is copy the contents of your My Documents folder on the old drive to your My Documents folder on the new drive.

You do have all the install CDs from your games and applications? Right?