The problem with that approach is that you have different hardware in the 
two machines.  Booting it into Safe Mode can probably be done easily, but 
things like video drivers and motherboard device drivers may need to be 
changed for this to work.

  There's a setting in the BIOS to control the order in which devices are 
checked for a bootable OS.  On *some* BIOSes, you may be able to choose more 
than one hard drive, but that's not universally true -- and in some cases 
you may only have that choice if your other bootable hard drive is SCSI....

David Gillett


On 14 Feb 2006 at 10:01, Lewis c Emerson wrote:

> Hi Mr. Gillet,
> 
> Many thanks for this reply in answer to my plea for help.  As you can
> tell I'm not all that knowledgeable in computer matters - although I'm
> learning more and more every day with the help provided by Freepctech.
> 
> I had thought that there was a way to force the computer to boot from a
> particular drive, but if not, then could I just replace the good drive in
> the W-95 machine with the suspect drive from the W-Me machine?  The OS is
> on the drive so it should boot into W-Me and if the problem is software
> then it should show up immediately.
> 
> Are there flaws in this approach?
> 
> Lewis Emerson 
> 
> On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:23:48 -0800 David Gillett <[log in to unmask]>
> writes:
> >   These are sort of good diagnostic steps if it really is a hardware 
> > 
> > problem.  If it's a software problem, it's not going to show up as a 
> > slave 
> > or USB enclosure, because that's not where the machine is booting 
> > from.
> > 
> >   A similar idea might be to put a fresh hard drive in your machine 
> > (and 
> > install a clean copy of the OS to that...), and slave the existing 
> > drive to 
> > it.  You can gradually copy your existing files to the new drive 
> > (generally 
> > it will be better to reinstall applications rather than try to move 
> > them), 
> > and at some point when you've salvaged everything you need, reformat 
> > the old 
> > drive.
> > 
> >   [If it's a motherboard problem, it will show up with the new drive 
> > as 
> > well, and then you'll know.]
> > 
> > David Gillett
> > 
> > 
> > On 13 Feb 2006 at 19:42, Lewis c Emerson wrote:
> > 
> > > Folks,
> > > 
> > > I've been frustrated for many month with a sick computer (Athelon 
> > 900 MHz
> > > CPU running Windows-Me)  that kept freezing up more and more 
> > frequently
> > > and finally became just too much trouble to keep trying to reboot 
> > again
> > > and again for the very few times that it actually would be usable 
> > for
> > > short periods before freezing again.  I took it to a local repair 
> > shop
> > > and paid them $30 for their info that they couldn't get it to boot 
> > either
> > > after some unknown attempts to get it up and running.  All that I 
> > got
> > > from them that was positive was that the power supply was OK.  
> > They said
> > > it might be the motherboard or a software problem. 
> > > 
> > > Here's my idea as to how to isolate the problem - so will ask for
> > > comments. 
> > > 
> > > Idea #1 - Remove the hard drive from the sick machine and slave it 
> > to the
> > > hard drive in my older Windows-95 machine (with a Pentium CPU) and 
> > see if
> > > the problem also appears here - if not, the problem  would be the
> > > motherboard or associated hardware in the W-Me machine.  If it 
> > causes the
> > > same problem (freeze ups) in the W-95 machine it would be 
> > something on
> > > the hard drive from the W-Me machine. 
> > > 
> > > Idea #2. - Do essentially the same thing, but instead of slaving 
> > the W-Me
> > > hard drive to the one in the W-95 machine, buy a hard drive USB 
> > "cage"
> > > and put the W-95 hard drive in the cage connected to the W-Me 
> > machine and
> > > see what happens.
> > > 
> > > I guess I'm displaying my ignorance here, but hate to give up what 
> > I
> > > already have on hand and, there are a few things on the W-Me hard 
> > drive
> > > that I'd like to recover.
> > > 
> > > If either of these ideas are kuku can one of you kind folks 
> > suggest what
> > > in-house diagnostics I might perform here without additional 
> > costs.  I'm
> > > kinda elderly and can't spend too much on this. 
> > > 
> > > Many thanks,
> > > 
> > > Lewis Emerson
> > > 
> > >          PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
> > >                      visit our download web page at:
> > >                   http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml
> > 
> >                          PCBUILD's List Owners:
> >                       Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
> >                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>
> > 
> > 
> 
>                          PCBUILD's List Owners:
>                       Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
>                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                          http://freepctech.com