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I was finally able to load and run Windows XP on my ancient PC. Never was able to run CHKDSK /f, but managed anyway to get it going after MANY atempts.I had problems installing Service Pack 2 from CD, So I'm keeping it offline for now. I formatted C drive (about the 10th time) after reducing size to just 4 gigs. The rest of C I left raw. I'm thinking that would reduce the chance of hitting bad sectors, of which I think there are many.My intent now is to put in a tested good 180gig Western Digital IDE HDD. Original (bad) HDD is SATA. Mainboard both SATA & IDE. I will then format & partition new HDD, install XP on the C partition, run Service Pack 2 from CD. Then put it online and download all the post SP2 updates.2nd step will be add AV system, then copy all DATA from old HDD DATA partition onto new HDD.I'll then remove old HDD and hit it with a sledgehammer about 100 times to relieve some frustration.

Here's my question. As the old bad HDD is SATA, (primary 3) where should I put new IDE HDD? Primary 2? Should I set it as CS? Remember that old HDD will be removed as soon as everything (hopefully) checks out. So I don't want to set it as slave.

Let me know what you think.All replies appreciated.

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Cable Select should work fine, that is probably your best bet.

B

It turns out that the "good" hard drive wasn't good at all. After installing it the PC would spin up for a few seconds and the shut off. I did a process of elimination: cables, CD-RW, Second HDD, etc. but it all let back to "good"HDD. As soon as I put a power supply cable to it, the PC shut down. Very strange. Seems like there's a short in the drive. So now on on plan C. Had another new WD 300 gig still in the box that I bought yeard ago and never used. Partitioned it into 2 drives. Put XP on the "C". Will do updates next, AV system, then try to tranfers data from bad Sata drive.

Will keep you posted.

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Update: Had to install new 300 GB WD HDD. Fresh install of XP. Luckily I had a Service Pack 2 CD. THEN I couldn't get online. Finally found the onboard LAN driver on a cd. That worked. Updated to IE 8. Tried Windows Updates, would not work. Had to download the 315 gig package from M$. Installed that. That finally let me Windows Update to work. Just downloaded & installed another 115 critical updates. (post SP3, I guess). Next it's Anti-Virus install. Think I'll try Avast Free again. Oh, Forgot to mention, I also had to re-activate Windows OVER THE PHONE.UNBELIEVABLE. Good thing I don't have a life. Think I got about 40 hours into this project at this point.

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