extra ram added, pc doesnt work. Extra ram removed, still doesnt work? wtf

[nico-t]

Fuck this shit

[Juicy D. Links]

plug the power in

[Juicy D. Links]

maybe there is dried semen in the memory sockets

[signupdamnit]

Put in an xp cd (the cd from the xp ive got on the old hd is gone) and it doesnt do anything with it when i boot from cd.
Put in an xp boot disk and it also doesnt do anything.

Now what?

Sorry if it seems like a stupid question but people sometimes forget this: do you have the BIOS configured with the CD before the HDD as far as boot order?

[signupdamnit]

now i have my original windows in c:/WINDOWS and the new one in c:/WINDOWS.0

Selection screen at start of booting the pc with 2 xp's. When i select the old xp it reboots (doesnt work).
The new xp works but doesnt have all the programs installed.

Can i migrate the new one with the old? Or can i repair the old windows from within the new windows? Help is really appreciated.

Migrating programs (although getting data ought to be easy) like that is a PITA because of the registry. The easiest thing to do would have been to only install the old HDD in the new computer and boot it. Then from there if you could not boot use the XP install disk (you did not however want to actually do a new install if you could avoid it) to switch to generic drivers for your hardware, get it to boot normally, then replace with the proper drivers and proceed from there.

What you did makes it all a lot harder and more complicated. I could probably do it if I was sitting in front of the computer but telling someone how remotely is difficult and it's likely going to be very difficult for you to do this. At this point if you still want to do it yourself you probably need to read up on using the system recovery console in order to repair why it is not booting. Get any important data not backed up off there before screwing with this (one way, use a Ubuntu liveCD - http://www.ubuntu.com to do this along with a thumb drive) further.

If I were in your shoes with what you know, I'd just call a pro at this point. $50 - $75 for someone good off of Craigslist.