Solved Updated all hardware apart from hard drives

[smurf505]

My desktop PC died after an accident a couple of months ago and I have very nearly finished building a new one, however, I want to retrieve what data I can off the 4 hard drives.

I had a dual boot setup with XP and 7 Pro 64 bit running and wanted to know whether I would be able to get them running in an entirely new PC at least long enough that I can remove anything of importance.

Or if anyone know a way to access data from user accounts on them without running both the versions of Windows installed on them that would also do.

 

[HonorGamer]

What I normally do is I will pull the hard drives out, and my primary windows hard drive(the one i do everything on) will be set as boot in the BIOS, and windows should read the rest of the harddrives as regular space and you should still have access to all of your files just by going to My computer.

Hope this helps.

-Gamer

 

[gregrocker]

In addition if you want to boot the old OS's you can adjust them once connected by making sure the BIOS is set to CSM or Legacy (if they came from a Legacy and not UEFI mobo) then Adjust Win7 to boot on new hardware with Paragon Adaptive Restore CD. But first see if they will boot without it.

Do this with each one plugged in individually. If Win7 still won't start after adjustment, confirm the 100mb System Reserved partition (preferred if you have it) or C is Partition Marked Active then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times .

If XP won't boot after adjusting when plugged in alone, boot into it's disk to Repair console to run bootrec /fixmbr and bootrec /fixboot. You can also adjust XP by doing a booted XP Repair Install

Once you have both booting, you can boot your choice via BIOS boot priority or BOot menu key, or install EasyBCD to Win7 to add XP to a Windows Dual boot menu which leaves both independent to come and go as you please, whereas installing each fresh in order of age puts the Win7 boot files on XP and makes it dependent without surgery. So always install with only one HD plugged in.

 

[smurf505]

Thank you both for your advice, will try what you suggested on Friday when I receive the final piece of my new PC.

Hopefully all will be well with them.