Replacing hard drive in Windows XP home

[counslr2003]

I'm a bit of a newbie, but I've decided to take a crack at installing a new hard drive in my emachines T4160. I bought a western digital 120G and used the Data Lifeguard tools to copy all the files from the old drive to the new drive and, of course, I can't boot from the new drive. I have them both hooked up with the new drive as the master and the old drive as the slave. Jumpers are set to 'cable select'. I can see both drives and transfer files, but I'd like to get rid of the old drive and operate windows from the quicker, bigger drive. How is this done? All I have from emachines is their Restore Cd and no original Windows Xp Home Cd. Should I reformat the new drive and install Windows XP from the restore Cd and then try and copy as much as I can from the old drive or can I use something like Norton Ghost 2004 to make an image of the old drive and copy it to the new drive? I'd like to avoid trying to find all the proper software, drivers, etc. to get me up and running again and would prefer a simple ghosting method (obviously) and be able to boot off the NEW drive. Anyone have any advice?

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

First of all...norton ghost is an excellent choice. Youd be up and running in no time.


Ok, now..when you say you cant boot...EXACTLY what does it do when you try to boot? Blank screen, error message, lockup..what??

Have you tried to boot with JUST the new drive in there??

quote----> "I have them both hooked up with the new drive as the master and the old drive as the slave. Jumpers are set to 'cable select'."

Was the old drive set to cable select already? or is that just what the data lifeguard instructions were? I would try it with JUST the new drive and set the new drive as "master"

When you say you can "see" both drives. Does that mean you see them when using data lifeguard? Do they show up in the bios though?


JP

[John Prophet]

Try not to double post also..it will only confuse the issue, lol.

[John Prophet]

Dont answer this thread. we will get it closed so we can concentrate on the other thread...less confusion that way.

[counslr2003]

sorry about the confusion. The old drive was set to 'cable select' so I left them both set to cable select. After the data swap using the Data Lifeguard Tools, I left the jumper on 'cable select' and removed the old drive and I got an error message that 'windows/system32/awgiha.dll could not be found' or something similar to that effect. I assumed that the data swap wouldn't make whatever proper changes needed to be made to make the new drive the boot drive. It didn't occur to me to go in and change the jumper to master since the old drive was running by itself in the 'cable select' setting.

When I say "I see them both". It is after I boot with both drives attached and booting off (I presume) the old C: drive. The 120G new drive is shown as drive H and appears to be identical to the old 40G drive.

If i create a Ghost image of the old drive, can I just restore it to the new drive and unplug the old drive and the new drive will magically know it's the boot drive and work correctly? Or, will I need to take other steps to advise Windows XP that the boot drive is now a different physical drive?

[capybara]

Originally posted by counslr2003
...... got an error message that 'windows/system32/awgiha.dll could not be found' or something similar to that effect.

was the error
ntoskrnl not found?

[billniceguy]

what ver of ghost do u have?

[Chuckiechan]

I think that machines that use a restore cd have a special master boot record, don't they? I can't use your restore cd on my computer, it knows it is a different machine.

I would go to the E machines website and see if you can down load a special utility for Hdd change outs. I don't think you can clone this special MBR parition.