first day here, and i need help bad

[candycane]

please excuse my ignorance of computers and my bad spelling. here is my problem . i removed the 80gig hd (maxtor) from my hp desk top which was purchased in 2001. i moved across the country and bought a emachines put the hd in and it said no operating system.
i later bought a hp that was a simular modle and the thing works great. it had no hard drive. just got a great deal on a ibm net vista with out a hd and memory.
all run win xp, but only the hp will reconise the operating system. all the rest will reconise the drive but says there is no operating system.
the thing is i would like to put the hard drive into either the net vista or emachines as it has some software that i can not replace on it, and i dont know how to transfer any of the info or anything like that
. im on SSI because im crazy , so you do not have to tell me in crazy, i already know that, but i need help . i have lots of other questions but 1 thing at a time for now.
and im a 49 yr old male, the handle is because of a tattoo ive had for 20 years. so ill not call you sweety.
i do have xp pro on disc if i have to use that
ive tried booting from the repair discs i have but they are for hp, so they dont work
thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

 

[Chase]

Re: first day here, an d i need help bad

Could be some sort of HP lock they've put on the data on the hard drive (as HP has been known to do such things like that, including the locking of partitions)...I'll do a bit of research and see what I can come up with though...

 

[candycane]

Re: first day here, an d i need help bad

thank you , if you need any of the specs i think i can find them

 

[jfenwick]

Re: first day here, an d i need help bad

Maybe an XP protection thing...i know in the past I've had problems upgrading multiple hardware components as XP thinks i'm trying to pirate it or something....just a shot in the dark.

 

[Trotter]

When XP is installed, it takes a snapshot of the hardware it is installed on (that is a layman's explanation and will suffice for here). It also had the drivers and whatnot for the old computer. When it was placed in a different computer with different components, it wouldn't work. Once it was placed in a computer with similar components, it worked. That's why you usually have to reinstall Windows when you change motherboards.

 

[candycane]

ive tried with a restore disc, but it was stuck in bios, and kept in a vicious circle. ill try and install my xp pro operating system on it. its licensed for a total of 5 computers, and ive only put it on one so far. will let you know how it go's and thank you !!!!

 

[NightSurge]

Yep, I agree with Trotter. Should be a simple matter of formatting and reinstalling Windows.