I have an old compaq hard drive that i would like to had to my Hewitt packard. This compaq hard drive,has windows xp on it, but now it will not boot past the login user screen. How can I merge it with my current harddrive and use it as one or HOW can I use it just as a storage hard drive? I know how to take it out of the old PC and put it in my current one, but i don't know what to do once i have the computer turned on.
You can't do that. Windows will not work if the hd is moved to another computer because the computer's hardware won't match.
if you set the compaq drive as a slave and place it properly on the IDE cable, you can use it as an extra storage drive and thus properly format to remove windows xp.
Oh wow!! How do I do format it?? I know how to properly install it. What do I do once I turn on the computer?
once it on, windows should boot normally. if the drive only had one partition originally, just go to My Computer and look under the hard drives listed. you'll see your original drives (C, D, etc.) plus a new one (call it Z for now, as i don't know what you have on your compie). right-click on Z, and select "Format." click "Start" and let it go.
