Boot up partition that contains windows installation files?

[paqman]

Ok, bit of a strange situation here. My pc rebuilt my pc, and added the old hard drive to my new pc as a data drive. But I kept the windows installation intact. So theoretically, if I put that hard drive back into the old pc, it would boot fine. However, that is not possible, so what I'm wondering is, is there a way to boot this partition temporarily? Even in a virtual pc environment or something? I really just need to boot it to deactivate a couple licenses that were installed on it. (To be exact, my iphone was syced up to that pc, and I forgot to unregister that pc from my iphone, as well as uninstall microsoft office to release the license)

Anyone know how to do this?

Alternatively, since all my itunes library and files are there intact, is there a way to grab the library/itunes data whatever, and put them in place on the new computer so i can sync up my iphone without loosing all the data on it?

Forgot to mention, this pc is not the pc described in my post. This disk is currently residing in a Dell Poweredge SC420 server running Windows XP MCE 2005.

[MANEMAN]

Hi there, Welcome.

So theoretically, if I put that hard drive back into the old pc, it would boot fine.

Theoretically it should.

Originally it would have been set as either "Master" or perhaps "Cable Select" Have you changed the setting on this HDD to "Slave" for use as a data drive and forgotten to change it back again ?

There is also a possibility that whilst running as a data drive you have corrupted or destroyed the Master Boot Record (MBR)

since all my itunes library and files are there intact, is there a way to grab the library/itunes data whatever, and put them in place on the new computer so i can sync up my iphone without loosing all the data on it?

If you cannot get it to boot after the above suggestion, and you are going to use it as a slave/data disk, the new operating system should be able to "see" the slave disk, and read what is on it. If you can read the files, you will also be able to copy/paste them to a new location. This could be the disk where the operating system resides or an external disk, Flash drive,CD, or DVD.

[paqman]

Hi there, Welcome.

So theoretically, if I put that hard drive back into the old pc, it would boot fine.

Theoretically it should.

Originally it would have been set as either "Master" or perhaps "Cable Select" Have you changed the setting on this HDD to "Slave" for use as a data drive and forgotten to change it back again ?

There is also a possibility that whilst running as a data drive you have corrupted or destroyed the Master Boot Record (MBR)

since all my itunes library and files are there intact, is there a way to grab the library/itunes data whatever, and put them in place on the new computer so i can sync up my iphone without loosing all the data on it?

I made no changes to the master/slave settings on the drive, and the drive is actually paritioned in two parts, and the OS is on one part. I wasn't asking if it would boot fine in the original pc, I was simply stating that to illustrate that I have all my original OS files intact, INCLUDING, the itunes installation files. I've got the old pc running another version of winders. Perhaps if I installed itunes over there, then just copied my itunes directory over the installed files it would recognize that pc as the one it was registered on?

If you cannot get it to boot after the above suggestion, and you are going to use it as a slave/data disk, the new operating system should be able to "see" the slave disk, and read what is on it. If you can read the files, you will also be able to copy/paste them to a new location. This could be the disk where the operating system resides or an external disk, Flash drive,CD, or DVD.