Can XP corrupt Windows 7?

Hello, I would like to use my old XP Ide hard drive in an external enclosure connected to my new Windows 7 desktop. I couldn't get XP to boot in my old system, no matter what I tried, or disks I used. All options when selected resulted every time with, " Press F10 for recovery". I finally gave up and bought another tower.
The old h/drive was still spinning, so I'm hoping I may be able to recover some of the files on it. That's a brief history. If the boot sector in the XP h/drive was corrupt in some way, (it was returning clean scans before it went wrong), could it harm the new OS, or could I somehow retrieve my files safely. It will be evident to you that I'm no computer genius. Your advice would very welcome, thank you.

Hi Codenine and welcome. As long as you don't try to boot from the external enclosure, you will have no problems doing what you want. The XP drive in the enclosure should just appear as another drive letter under Computer and hopefully you can access it to retrieve your old files. If me, the first thing I would do once the external drive is seen under Computer in Win7 is run your anti-malware scanners on it to make sure it is clean. Then copy your data files to your Win7 drive, or somewhere safe. Then run chkdsk /r on the XP drive, or run "error checking" from the Tools menu for the drive.

In addition, before trying anything make a system image and a system restore point, to be sure that you can return in the event of problems.

Having a good backup is always good advice, but adding an external drive is not likely to create any problems with the main computer - so there would be nothing really to return to. But still, recommending a current backup is always good advice.

Thank you Digerati and richc46 for your replies. I know now that the reason XP would not boot was because Windows had installed updates, one of which was apparently KB977165. Windows is aware of the problem but as yet are not convinced it was the update which was to blame, but maybe an infected atapi.sys file (whatever that may be!). Windows closed my computer down after installation of updates, and it just refused to boot up. Many peoples machines have suffered the same glitch. I'm not sure if a 'cure' has been found and approved by Microsoft. Thank you again for your advice.

Richard. As I said in my first post I tried Safe Mode, but immediatly after pressing enter, the ' Press F10 for recovery' screen returned. I changed the boot priority to CD so I could use the Recovery disk but each time the result was the same 'Press F10 etc'.
I am very happy with Windows 7 and feel confident now that I can retrieve my files. I will let you know the outcome. Thank you.

Hi There Codenine!

Check this out: Restart issues after installing MS10-015? Microsoft wants your help! | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com and also this: Windows Live OneCare safety scanner: Free online tool for PC health and safety There may be some helpful information there and there is a MicroSoft Scanner provided at the second link.

Hope this helps!

ranger72

Useful info Ranger, I will certainly check it out. Thank you for that.