Athlon and XP Questions

Hi all

I have come by an Athlon box 2.2GHz 448Mb RAM running XP Media Centre.

Can anyone help with the following please?

Is XP media centre like XP home - i. e. no administrator account except in
safe mode?

I would like add an old IDE drive into the box to recover data.
The existing HD is SATA I believe, connected by bright orange/red flat
cable.
There is a CD writer attached via a ribbon cable.
Can I connect the old drive to a spare connector on this ribbon cable?
I understand that I will have to set the drive jumpers to "slave"?
Also, the old drive will have been assigned the letter C from its original
install. Will this confuse the boot process, or will it be assigned a new
letter in the Athlon box?

Thanks

Phil

TheScullster wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I have come by an Athlon box 2.2GHz 448Mb RAM running XP Media Centre.
>
> Can anyone help with the following please?
>
> Is XP media centre like XP home - i. e. no administrator account except in
> safe mode?
>
> I would like add an old IDE drive into the box to recover data.
> The existing HD is SATA I believe, connected by bright orange/red flat
> cable.
> There is a CD writer attached via a ribbon cable.
> Can I connect the old drive to a spare connector on this ribbon cable?
> I understand that I will have to set the drive jumpers to "slave"?
> Also, the old drive will have been assigned the letter C from its original
> install. Will this confuse the boot process,

> or will it be assigned a new letter in the Athlon box? yes
>
> Thanks
>
> Phil

On 9/28/2011 2:46 AM, TheScullster wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I have come by an Athlon box 2.2GHz 448Mb RAM running XP Media Centre.
>
> Can anyone help with the following please?
>
> Is XP media centre like XP home - i. e. no administrator account except in
> safe mode?

Windows XP Media Center Edition is an extended version of Windows XP
Professional. All three editions typically have an Administrator
account, it's just that it does not show up on the Welcome Screen except
in Safe Mode.

> I would like add an old IDE drive into the box to recover data.
> The existing HD is SATA I believe, connected by bright orange/red flat
> cable.

If the cable is about 1/4" side, I would say you're correct.

> There is a CD writer attached via a ribbon cable.
> Can I connect the old drive to a spare connector on this ribbon cable?
> I understand that I will have to set the drive jumpers to "slave"?

The jumpers will have to be correct. Check the jumper on your CD-RW--is
it set to Master or Cable Select? If it's using Cable Select (CS), then
you can likely set the same on your hard drive.

> Also, the old drive will have been assigned the letter C from its original
> install. Will this confuse the boot process, or will it be assigned a new
> letter in the Athlon box?

The added hard drive should just pick up the first unused drive letter.

- - - - - - -

If you plan on doing this sort of thing very often, you might want to
consider buying one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812232002

The are really handy, and work great. In fact, I might buy another one
just now.