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The old computer is dead and in the trash, except for all the drives (hard and optical) a video card and a USB card. I had two internal drives "C" and "E" on that machine that I can play around with on the new computer. I was able to connect the old E drive onto the new computer by changing the letter on the DVD RW drive that was assigned E to K. I then changed the E drive to Y and changed the K back to E. In the new machine, C drive is the one with Vista loaded onto it.
So, I have one internal HD labeled Y that I can connect via the USB connector and my new computer sees it and allows me to open it. It wont do it with the other drive labeled C. This HD drive is powering up. My best guess is that the conflict is with the drive letters being the same, plus the fact that it wont let me change the drive letter that Vista is loaded onto, the drive from which it boots. Since the HD that I want to retrieve files from was also a boot drive with XP loaded onto it, I don't think I'll be able to change that letter assignment either.
What I need is a computer whose boot drive is not assigned to C. Or perhaps some registry editing which I am not confident performing unless I know exactly what such editing would be doing.
The nature of the old computer's failure lends me to believe that the HD was not the fault and that it is good.
And I also thought I'd be smart and upload XP onto my external to see it I could boot from it, but the option to install was grayed out.
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