then you can move your SH*T to the C hdas a file or keep as a 2nd drive

how do i set my drive as D: in his computer with his being C:
Do I do this in BIOS and change drive letter?

thanks

I have XP on my HD aswell can it be hooked up as a slave and still be able to run in that way?

you will need to reinstall xp becouse it is set up to look for your old set up

Re:
 

It is possible to take one drive from one machine and install it into the other. It will need to be pinned as a Master, you will need to change the BIOS to read the new drive, then you would need to install all the new drivers for all the different hardware, the remove all the old drivers for the old hardware. A re-install of the OS maybe needed but you won't necessarily loose everything, if you do a 'Repair' installation of the OS, it will just fix and reinstall the OS files and should not touch your data, wise to make a backup before hand.

Not the quickest or cleanest method but it is do-able. The first time it boots up you will get an endless line of "New Hardware found".

See... now you're making it a bit too compliated. The guy is obviously a bit of a novice, so I didn't want to lay that scenario out for him... :D

Anyways, you've got it a bit mixed up......

You can't just put the new drive in, have it boot, and then start adding/removing drivers. Reason being that if you don't have the proper chipset/hd controller drivers on the drive it just won't ever boot up for you. (yes, even in safe mode)

The best/easiest way that I've found to do it is go to in to device manager and remove all the devices on the old machine before bringing the drive in to the new system.

Then once you get it in to the new system it will start to add new hardware as you suggested.

There are still instances where even this method won't work though :(

Just make sure the jumpers are set up properly.

Also if your using your drive as a spare drive on his comp, doesn't matter what ide controller he has or anything but if your booting off of yours in his computer, then it matters.

This method is fast and simple if you have an XP install CD.

All PC's now have primary and secondary channels on the IDE controller. If you plug your HD into the secondary channel it will still be readable without any conflict over the jumper settings. The system should recognize the new drive and assign it a drive letter as soon as it boots up. Once you have copied any data from your drive to his, fdisk and re-format your drive, remove both from the system, and plug your drive into the primary channel and his into the secondary channel. Run the install CD to load a fresh copy of XP onto your drive, thereby loading all the correct drivers etc.

Now you should be able to copy any file from his drive to yours without any trouble, and run the system as you wanted to.

Don't forget to D/L and install any updates (especially the security patches...:stroke: ) from MS that have been released since the install disc was created.

HTH