CF-29 XP won't boot from HHD

O K, I'm a rookie.
I got a CF-29E off ebay that had a bad screen, which I replaced. (Yes I was all proud of myself.) Like many used Tough books it was missing the HHD and caddy. So before I spent the money on those items I thought I would test the computer by putting the Panasonic caddy and hard drive from my CF-29N into the CF-29E. These were original parts with XP pro SP2 installed. When I started up the CF-29E I got only a blank screen. I booted again and hit F2 and the BIOS screen came up. I F10'd out of that and got the screen that informed me that XP had not shut down correctly and gave me the option of various safe modes or resuming XP. I selected resume and everything froze up. I tried it several more time, allowing the timer to count down, selecting safe mode, etc... Each time it just froze. I have no battery in the E and the multimedia bay is empty.

Am I doing something wrong?
Is there something incompatible between the N and the E?
Or is there a fault in the 29E?

Thanks for your help.

 

The N and The E have some major hardware changes that XP can't handle without a re install. If you want to test the unit out, try a Ubuntu 10.10 live cd.

 

Thanks Shawn.
I might try that. I haven't played with Ubuntu for years.