Ok I have built the computer with the specs i put on my profile thing. I used a hard drive out of my HP computer that got stolen ( i had the harddrive out of the pc when it was stolen) so I used the old HD to start the newly built PC first try but it was operating very very poorly so I reinstalled windows using the recovery partition that was on the drive and it gave me an error about hardware configuration error, so I took it to my friends computer and reformatted the HD and now when I plug it into my new sytem it says DISC READ ERROR HAD OCCURRED PRESS CTRL ALT DELETE TO RESTART and I cant get past that screen, I played with some CMOS settings and it let me past that screen finally I got to the windows set up screen but after a scan it said windows did not detect a Hard disc please make sure all HD's are plugged in and powered correctly....... I dont know what else to do... please help!!

BTW this is a serial ATA HD WD 320gb WD3200AAKS
also when I look in the CMOS settings it always shows this HD as a slave drive but when I had 2 drives in before (this HD with previous data and a blank HD it showed them both as master drives)

Hello Spoilt,

Welcome to PCHF.

You cannot install Windows on one PC, and then move the disk to another PC.. it *will not* boot, unless the hardware between the two PC's are identical make, and similar in model. The same applies to a recovery partition that was intended for use on another PC.

You need an original setup CD, and it needs to be installed on the intended PC.

. You will need a clean install of Windows, using a full/original setup CD

As regards you slave problem, all you need to do is attach the HDD to the very end of the ribbon cable (and not in-between), and change the jumper on the HDD to "Master" instead of Slave or CS.



Jumper settings tend to vary, you may need to check the front of the HDD for the correct jumper location.

EDIT: Marked as Answered.