Moving XP installation from laptop to desktop

[Guest John DeStefano]

Hello,

 

I have an HP Pavilion laptop with Windows XP Home installed on it.

The laptop has died (display is completely blank, and external

monitors show a blank screen), but the hard drive is okay. I bought a

USB external enclosure for the hard drive, and I hooked it up to my

PC. My BIOS permits me to boot from the drive, but the XP

installation itself complains about the hardware and won't boot. I

wanted to then try a repair installation, but the XP disc that came

with the laptop works only on the laptop hardware. So I tried to do a

repair install with an XP Professional disc, but that complains that

the XP Home disk does not contain an XP compatible partition (which is

an odd message, since XP is already installed on it).

 

What can I do to install some version of XP on this disk to make it

bootable again, without losing the installed settings and

applications?

 

Thanks,

~John