installed windows outside of computer to be ran on... help

im sabah · #1 10-13-2004, 01:43 PM

whats up guys, i have sort of a dillemma. some background - my father needs his laptop for work and it was pretty much destroyed with viruses and such so i backed up his data and installed a fresh version of windows. here is where i ran into my problem.

the problem with his laptop is that his cd rom is messed up so i had to remove the hard disk from the laptop and connect it to my pc. i disabled my master harddrive after formatting his laptop drive and then installed windows through the cd rom on my pc. everything went fine, and windows booted up easily on my pc. i then proceeded to remove his hard disk from my pc and reinstall it into his laptop. after connecting everything, wondows will not load on his laptop. i get the screen where it asks if i want to start in safe mode, most recent working settings, start normally, etc. but no matter which option i choose windows fails to load. when selecting safe mode it will list the files it is loading but will freeze about halfway through listing the files. if i select start windows normally or with most recent working settings, either it will just freeze on that initial screen or the hard disk will work a little and then te screen turns black and nothing happens. im guessing that the problem is that windows is configured to use the hardware on my pc since it was installed there but i dont see why it wont boot up at all. is there anyway i can accomplish this installation in this fashion or will my father be forced to wait util we can source a new cd rom for his laptop and then just install it normally from there? thanks.

im sabah · #2 10-13-2004, 01:56 PM

interesting, i did not know this - thanks a lot for making me aware. question... do other versions of windows act the same? i know i have windows 2000 and windows 98 somewhere so if i were to do the same thing with those would it configure it to only run on my pc? or is this feature limited to only xp?

scouse · #3 10-13-2004, 02:14 PM

You can do a repair that will fix this for you, first put the hard drive back in your fathers laptop, with the XP you installed on it from your own computer. Now set the laptop to boot from CD Rom and reboot the laptop with the XP disc in the drive then when you come to the prompts on screen just as if it is installing once again, say yes to a clean install do not choose repair, then on the next screen you get the choice once more do you want to do a repair, now this time you say yes to a repair.

You will be asked to put your serial number in so do this and then just let it repair itself, once it is finished and reboots it should work fine now.

But if this is just your standard XP and not the Xp Corp edition then the XP install will only last for so many days.

The only way you can get to install XP on more than one computer is by owning the Corp edition mate. Or buy a new one.

scouse · #4 10-13-2004, 02:23 PM

My bad i must of missed that part.

im sabah · #5 10-13-2004, 02:38 PM

yeah, he has the xp pro corporate with service pack 2. so you are saying with the corp xp, repairing the install in the laptop will last permanently whereas if i only had the non-corp edition it would last temporarily? of course this is assuming he gets a new cd-rom, which seems to be what his only option is right now. thanks for the info guys - i never thought i would get responses this quick