I need some expert advice

[gingebond]

hi,
My dell d600 laptop's hdd broke and my power on my acer aspire is faulty so i have put the hdd from the acer into the dell. To hopefully get a workin lappy. The thing is when i boot it up it just freezes when i click "start windows normally". Why is this? can u change hdd's and run it as it was on the acer? or does it need formatting? I was hoping xp would just load up the same with all my files :(
Any advice would be great!!

[Dmitry 42]

It beacose Acer and DELL have different mainboard with differents chips.

Windows dont know that you place HDD to DELLr, installed windows known only her Acer.

If you want save you info, try boot from BOOT LIVE CD, and copy from DELL HDD to USB-Flash.

[gingebond]

Don't mean to sound ungrateful its just i didnt understand what u wrote. Are you saying there is a way to do it? I get that theyre different makes and systems. Does boot live cd=boot disc? as I haven't got any discs with either laptop.

[Dmitry 42]

Ok. Try undersatnd me.

1. Your way wrong. Windows on HDD from Acer will not work on DELL. Absolutely. Beacose mainboard on DELL and Acer not the same. You must reinstall windows to use it on HDD from Acer in DELL. Windows install support, drivers during sellfinstalled. and now it cant start beacose it not known new hardware (DELL) - it not installed in current configuration of you windows.

2. Live CD - it is special boot CD with installed Windows(you can download image of this CD from internet, write it on CD, and after boot from CD - like you boot from HDD - you got started windows, can open HDD and can copy to Flash) - Live CD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_cd)

But it not help you use your ACER windows on DELL. In this case you must reinstall windows.

[nethack47]

The instructions for how to talk to the computer hardware that the two different laptops are unlikely to be on your harddrive. Dell use quite different components from the Acer and it's not even certain that the harddrive is supported on the Acer.

Remembering what the D600 looks like on the inside you must have been doing quite some picking apart to get the harddrive out so why not just get an external harddrive box to put the disk in and rescue what you can get off it.

[gingebond]

Thanks for clearing that up fellas! I was just being impatient and wanted to use a lappy 2nite but never mind. I will just have to wait as I have bought an acer same as mine on fleebay. When it gets delivered i will bang my old hdd in it. Then i'll use the other hdd for the dell and just install windows again.

[craxxxx]

you can use offline sysrprep
search google