Can I format and install XP on a secondary HDD?

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I have 2 computer that friends have droped off at my place. Both have severly corrupted 98 (OS) can I put the HDD's in my computer as a secondary (It has one now for storage) clean them put XP on ( I have the disk) and then re-install them on the old computers. Ohh yes if you are thinking why not put them in the old towers and just boot from disk. well the old towers are not reading the disks. I have made the changes in bios so it should boot from disk but it still gives me the error of non-system disk error. How do you erase and reformat a HDD without a CD-rom? PS who recognises the cd rom is it the bios if so then why can't i get the mothers to see it? I will try to update bios now.
 
Put the hdd in and make it a slave to the main, now go to
the control panel,and go into performance and
maintenance. Now pick administrative tools.From there go
into computer management,under storage you will find disk
management. From there you can format your hdd,s to ntsf.
keep in mind, anything on the disk will be lost, but
after you do this, you will have your storage hdd,s
-----Original Message-----
I have 2 computer that friends have droped off at my
Click to expand...
place. Both have severly corrupted 98 (OS) can I put the
HDD's in my computer as a secondary (It has one now for
storage) clean them put XP on ( I have the disk) and then
re-install them on the old computers. Ohh yes if you are
thinking why not put them in the old towers and just boot
from disk. well the old towers are not reading the
disks. I have made the changes in bios so it should boot
from disk but it still gives me the error of non-system
disk error. How do you erase and reformat a HDD without
a CD-rom? PS who recognises the cd rom is it the bios
if so then why can't i get the mothers to see it? I will
try to update bios now.
 
PAUL said:
I have 2 computer that friends have droped off at my place. Both have
Click to expand...
severly corrupted 98 (OS) can I put the HDD's in my computer as a secondary
(It has one now for storage) clean them put XP on ( I have the disk) and
then re-install them on the old computers. Ohh yes if you are thinking why
not put them in the old towers and just boot from disk. well the old
towers are not reading the disks. I have made the changes in bios so it
should boot from disk but it still gives me the error of non-system disk
error. How do you erase and reformat a HDD without a CD-rom? PS who
recognises the cd rom is it the bios if so then why can't i get the mothers
to see it? I will try to update bios now.

If you're saying you want to install XP on your computer on their drives,
then slap the drives back into their computers and expect it to work, you're
going to have 2 problems.

First, when you put the drives back into their computers, they likely won't
boot and would need a repair install to get them working.

Second, if you install with your CD and key, they won't be able to activate.
 
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