Dual Boot - 2 hd new system

J

jwarren1939

New Member
I lost my motherboard and had to purchase a new computer. I had the hd's from the old system moved to my new system as they were. They now show as drives E and F. Drive E is my old C drive with windows xp pro installed. My new system has win 7 installed on C drive as a stand alone system. (ie: no dual boot) There a couple of applications that I would like to execute from my old win xp drive (E) that would allow me to export some files. (such as outlook express).
I added the win xp under "add and entry" but when I try to boot using the win xp entry on the boot menu I get a blank screen then the safe mode menu pops up.
What can I do at this point.
Is it possible to boot from the win xp drive?
I searched the FAQ but could not find my particular situation.
Any help at this point would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
 
It's very unlikely that an OS lifted from one h/w environment will boot in another. When installed on its original system, setup customized the driver set to the mobo chipset, graphics, etc of the old PC, and those are probably incompatible with where it finds itself sitting now.
You will, at minimum, need to "repair install" XP, so that it can pick up the requisite drivers and reconfigure itself, but that's not an option if the dead PC came with XP pre-installed, because it will have an OEM serial number which ties it permanently to the hardware it came with.
The EULA states that it's not transferable to different h/w, so even if you had an XP disc which you could use to do the repair, MS would not authorize your attempt to activate the system.
You can however, import your OE mail directly from the XP disk using WLMail from W7, and if the apps you want from XP are fairly old and/or simple, you might find they execute directly from the XP disk.
(I run an old Dictionary app on Vista and W7 by executing it directly from XP, because V/7 are both x64 and can't install it themselves because it has a 16 bit installer)
 
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