Posted on 06/12/2012 2:57:35 PM PDT by saminfl
I have a new Dell desktop with Windows 7 operating system. There are certain features about that system i hate, such as Windows Live mail. Can I install the hard drive from my old Dell Desktop with XP Professional into a vacant slot and boot from that when i want to?
Why not just disable WLM?
Why not just disable WLM?
This does not answer your question directly but I run Office 2003 including Outlook on my Windows 7 laptop. Works just fine.
You can turn off features you don’t like in windows 7,don’t see Windows live mail in my version?
I don't think so. Windows is finicky about the boot sectors of the drives. It would be great if you could, though.
I believe that I saw something about booting from an auxiliary hard drive on Kim Komando’s website. Go to komando.com and do a search. You might get lucky.
Unfortunately no, not without a lot of very hairy and very difficult tweaking.
But, you can, with little difficulty, uninstall or disable Windows live mail.
If you have not yet installed a second hard drive for backups, you should do so. Then back up the entire C drive, so you can restore it if you really mess up some day.
Yes.
When the machine first starts after a boot, you’ll see some sort of Dell screen and somewhere on it you’ll which which function key (F1, F2, etc.) you need to press at that point (before it starts booting windows off the hard drive) in order to go into Setup mode. (something like F12=Setup).
If you’re not quick enough, the BIOS will finish doing it’s thing and start booting Windows from the hard drive. You’ve got to be pretty quick. If you miss it and Windows starts booting, you can usually hold down Ctrl-Alt-Delete simultaneously (3-finger salute) which will Reset the machine so it starts booting again without stopping the power going to the mother board so the disk drives will not spin down but just have their initialization routine called by the boot as they normally do.
Once you successfully hit the setup key during the BIOS boot routines, that will put you into the BIOS (firmware on a chip on the motherboard) setup program. It will be a fairly straightforward menu navigation. There will be a menu option that says something like Boot Options; you can select that and somewhere on that screen change the order in which boot devices are attempted.
Do a Save and Exit, which will do another system restart and boot off the devices as you directed it to in Setup.
Of course, you have to physically install the hard drive first for it to be seen by the BIOS Setup.
I might be saying something you already know but never let Windows handle your e-mail. Presently, I am using Mozilla Thunderbird which is free and has enough functionality to serve most needs. Anytime I had crashes under Outlook or Outlook Express, the saved e-mails were no longer recoverable.
For older users, there is a freeware program called Calypso that did very well on my older Windows NT system.
You can do that, however, it may not work due to driver issues. Video is usually a problem, as well as audio, network, etc,etc. You may get a blue screen of death as well if you try it.
If it gives you problems try booting in safe mode with it, then install the correct drivers to match your new machine.
Usually there’s a place in the BIOS Boot Options to tell it
a) whether or not to present a menu of boot devices (this will make the machine wait for the user to select a boot device)
b) also how long to wait on the boot menu for the user to select a boot device when booting. Once the wait time has expired, the machine will simply boot off the default device.
Typically you make the wait time pretty sure to save time at boot time and you select the default device you really want to be the default. This way you don’t have to do anything during the boot and it avoids a long wait for user input.
bump. There’ll never be another XP.
Not necessarily. While it is possible to set up a system to boot from alternate boot devices, the problem is going to be the drivers. I am sure there will be different hardware in the new system than was in the old system - just how different will determine if you will be successful. And even if you can get it to boot, you would probably not have full functionality.
You would be better off doing a clean install of XP on the new system, assuming that you can find the XP drivers for the hardware on the new system.
Here is a decent article for setting up a dual boot.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html
Adding a hard drive from another machine is a bit trickier.
You’ll need to remove all system drivers, video, sound, etc. then boot off your XP disc and do a repair.
With that completed, you simply reinstall all the system drivers.
Of course, this assumes you have a bootable XP installation CD.
As it’s a Dell, chances are you only have a recovery CD.
There are some work arounds.
You might consider running XP on a virtual machine in your Win7 system.
I feel your pain. XP is a wonderful thing.
But why do major fiddling with a machine when you can just tool around in basic tool functions and disable what you don’t like?
Get Thunderbird (free and easy email program from Mozilla) and avoid Live mail, hotmail, and any other Windows thing you can avoid easily.
Windows7 will grow on you. It’s Windows8 you should fear and loathe!
Probably not.
You would need to be sure that you have the proper drivers for your new hardware installed on your XP drive. And depending on the age of your old system, they might very well be incompatible. More to the point, and older ATA drive is not hardware compatible with a SATA system, without some sort of adapter.
It is possible that if you have a new system that Dell would offer a “downgrade” to XP - They will do that on certain business class systems. Dell may also have XP hardware drivers that you could install on the old drive to allow you to boot to it, but that’s fairly complicated. However, if you do that, you may be able to set up a “Dual Boot” system.
Another thing to consider is that if you have more than 4GB of RAM, it won’t be usable on an XP (32bit) system.
Mark
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