Laptop hard drive dead?

[DPtheGod]

Hey everyone,

First of all, this is my first time posting here!

Secondly, a couple of days ago my laptop went awol and now I can't even get Windows (Vista) to start. Not even in Safe Mode. So, what I am trying to do now is plug my laptop HDD into my desktop as a secondary drive, but Windows wont even boot when using my desktop HDD as the primary. I can boot it into safe mode, but it takes ages.

However, when it is in safe mode, it asks me to install the driver for the generic volume, which I presume is the laptop HDD. However, Vista freezes after that, but I can still CTRL + ALT + DEL and bring up that menu.

I am thinking, can I install the driver for the laptop HDD on the desktop before installing the laptop HDD and rebooting? The problem is, the only driver I can find is from the laptop manufacturer (Gateway), and my desktop is from HP. Will that do any harm?

Thanks in advance!

 

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

you probably just need to set the laptop HDD to "slave" or whatever before plugging it in to you desktop.

 

[DPtheGod]

Well, I actually don't have any additional cables/controllers, so I'm using the one from my DVD drive haha. I've set the bios to boot from my desktop HDD as the primary. But, it still does nothing. When I have the laptop drive unplugged, it boots just fine.

 

[philbar71]

are these HDD's IDE? if they are then you will need to set the laptop one as slave and the one with vista on it to master.

if theyre not IDE then just make sure that the first boot device is the HDD and make sure that the HDD with vista installed is set for the 1st boot drive.

 

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

setting the bios boot device is great - but you need to change the jumpers on the HDD's