I have a running PC, to which I wish to add another hard drive, easy enough I hear you say? - the prob I have is that the harddrive I want to add is from another PC (It has win xp and loads of wanted files on it; the rest of the system went down and I have been unable to get it going again)

When I install the 'new' drive, windows keeps repeatedly booting up without loading windows.

I think that my problem is something to do with jumpers? let me see if I can explain what I THINk is the problem; then you can tell me how ignorant I realy am about computers!!
The hard drive in the running system has a vertical jumper on the left hand pins, the drive I want to install has jumpers in the same place AND a horizontal jumper immediately to the right. I do not know what these mean, or if they have any relation to my problem.

Also, an unrelated question, nothing to do with above:

What is the difference between P100 ram and pc 133 ram, can you mix them?

Cheers

Welcome troubled woman!

A tech will answer your problem soon.

Hello troubled woman,

Welcome to PCHF.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you cannot load XP from a drive that has been taken from another PC, unless the PC is identical or very very similar in hardware.

If you put the PC back to the way it was, with the original HDD that works (as Primary Master), and then add the HDD from the other PC (as Primary Slave). When you boot up your PC, you will see the other HDD as drive D:, and you will be able to get whatever files you need from there.

As regards memory, the only difference between PC100 and PC133, is that PC133 is slightly faster than PC100. Most motherboards will accept two different types of RAM (PC100/PC133), but if you buy PC133, and mix it with PC100, the speed of the PC133 will be matched with the PC100.