If your nephew's computer is an OEM, (Operating System pre-installed by the manufacturer), then all of the hardware is tied into that system by the OEM license.
Similarly, your hard drive which has Vista installed is tied to the motherboard that it was originally installed on. It will not work on other computer systems.
Since you have a new computer you have options. Either connect this drive internally to that new computer as a 2nd hard drive and extract your files, or insert the hard drive into some USB hard drive enclosure, connect that to a USB port, and extract your files that way.
Your nephew will need to get those Recovery Disks from his computer manufacturer/supplier.
Mark
My motherboard crashes and i bought a new computer. I took my old hard drive out and put it in my nephews old computer that had a bad hard drive. I reset windows vista and it says system configeration has changed. and cant finish installing windows. I thought he had the install disc for his mother board and cpu but he doesnt. I'm not sure who made the motherboard but he has a amd athlon II x2 processor. it's the same processor that was in my old computer. is there anyway i can get windows to reconise the new configeration?

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