My workhorse for the past 2 years has just now died. It started out with a loose power adapter unit in the back, now it totally broke off to a point where its irrepairable. I felt like an ER doctor, trying to save it's life... but its gone. I unscrewed the screen, took out the hard drive, the keyboard and other major parts to the computer. My question is... since I took out my hard drive, can I just simply take it to another laptop and plug it in and use it like I was before? Right now I am using my desktop and this week I will be "parting out" parts from my laptop on ebay.

The easy answer: no.

The compicated answer: When Windows is installed on a computer, it makes thousands of files that are hardware specific. These little files help Windows correctly utilize the various functions of a computer included by the manufacture (processor, co-processor, memory, southbridge accesories, etc.) For this reason, every installation of Windows is unique to the make and model of computer you are using. If you were to plug your harddrive into your new laptop, Windows would not be able to run properly because many of its instructions will no longer be processed correctly. If you are lucky, Windows might boot up. However, you would be plagued by constant crashes, slow performance, etc.

The best way to get the information into your laptop would be to pop open your desktop, install the laptop drive (you can leave it hanging, cause it wont have a slot), set the jumper on the back to "slave", and the jumper on the back of the desktop's main drive as "master, and boot up. You will be able to access the harddrive, so you can make backups, burn CDs, email files, etc.

I wouldn't bother parting out the laptop. Laptop hardware changes so fast (depending on what Chinese factory has the fastest, cheapest generic hardware parts available at any given time) and parts are never interchangable with other makes and models. I would be suprised if you sold anything but the battery and screen for a few bucks.

Cassidy

Snibble, is that hard drive running windows that isn't xp? If so, and if the connections are compatible (they seem to be pretty standard nowdays), maybe you could put the hard drive into a new laptop and boot into safe mode. Then you could change the drivers, etc, to the new hardware. I think xp authenticates itself with hardware signatures, though, allowing changes in only 2 components or something, so this probably wouldn't work for xp without calling ms and getting new codes or whatever they do.
Best of Luck.

Can you explain this? SO I swith harddrives with my desktop? Or what? I am running W98 on my laptop harddrive.. and XP on my desktop.

You arn't switching drives, you are ADDING your laptop drive.

Your desktop has a harddisk controller that allows two devices per IDE cable chain. When you open your desktop up, you will see a flat long cable running from the mother board to the dekstop's hard drive. On this long, flat cable should be another free molex connector. This allows you to run two drives on the same chain.

After you install your laptops drive (by plugging it into the IDE chain cable and a molex cable that supplies power), your computer will now have two drives. If you tried to start up at this point, your dekstop would be very confused as to which drive it should "boot from". It wouldn't know whether to run Windows from your desktop or laptop drive.

And thats why you need to set one as a slave and one as a master. Their should be a little jumper chart on the back of each drive, and a little set of pins with a connecter that allows you to cross two adjacent pins. You need to set your desktop's hard drive to master, and your old laptop drive as a slave. That way, when you start up, the computer will check the hard drives, identify the "master" drive, and use the boot record and Windows installation from that drive to start up. Then, once Windows is booted, your slave drive will now be available in your "My Computer" under a new drive name like "D:" or "F:".

Now you can access all the files on your laptop drive from Windows, without needing to actually run Windows from it. All your old Windows files and folders will be sitting on the drive twidling their thumbs while you snatch all the good files off.

Hope that is enough to get you started. It should become fairly self explanatory when you check the jumpers on the drives and see the cable arrangement.

Cassidy

I'm thinking it will be much simpler just to replace the broken part on the laptop. Mine has been done twice.

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Rick Miley
2014 Tesla Model S
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Former MB: 99 E300, 86 190E 2.3, 87 300E, 80 240D, 82 204D Euro
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update...

unfortunately, the geniuses at HP didn't design the part where the electrical adapter sends power to the laptop. With use, the plastic and metal parts to it simply ripped off the motherboard. I tried fixing this but soldering and gluing it in to place, but didn't work.. it broke off again and this time had no power at all.

Now, I found 2 potential "parts" laptops on ebay from the same model as I have. Since I love my laptop so much, I plan on getting one off ebay and hooking up my good parts back on to it and get everything going.

Will see how it turns out. Thank you all