Hard drive to new computer help!

[LRguy]

I posted it on usenet a few days ago.

I currently have a t-bird system and I'm planning on buying a new athlon xp one. I'm going to buy it with no hard drive. My question is, can I just connect my old hard drive to my new system and will it just work? I have a 3 year old Gigabyte GA-7ZM VIA KT 133 motherboard, and am planning on getting a VIA KT600. I have installed the latest 4 in 1 drivers also. I just want it to start to Windows XP first, then I can look for other drivers for other devices.

I'm planning to spend about $500 on my new system, I'll be buying a new case with power supply, it'll come installed with the motherboard (ASUS A7V600 KT600 SATA LAN), DvD CD-RW combo drive, floppy drive, pc2700 memory, and Thermaltake Volcano 11 CPU fan. Keyboard, monitor, ect... I'll be transfering from my old computer.

I know Athlon 64 is coming out on Sept 23, but that's way over my budget for awhile (broke Lao here:-{). My strategy is to buy an advance board with a low speed and cheap cpu (2500+ XP at $103) and upgrade in the future to much faster one's in the future. I use this with the computer I'm going to replace (750MHz to 1.4GHZ 2 years later.).

My soon to be new computer and new LOVE! Tada, here it is!
ENERMAX SILVER WINDOW CASE
http://www.neocomputers.com/mmneocomputers/Images/2416.JPG
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Here's the only answer I got.
(Connect your old hard drive as master on the primary IDE. Before booting into Windows XP for the first time, perform a Repair Install as detailed here: http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Then reinstall all critical updates and service packs from Windows Update. Install VIA 4in1aka Hyperion drivers, video drivers, NIC drivers, etc.)
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My follow up question.
"Can I still do this with the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 and install their drivers instead too."
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Another answer.
(Yes, you sure can. Backup any important data before switching your motherboard, then do the repair install.)

 

[chocoruacal]

Originally posted by: LRguy
My question is, can I just connect my old hard drive to my new system and will it just work?

No. Yes. Maybe. The suggestion was correct, perform a repair install. Another option would be to remove all the hardware drivers from Device Manger, boot in, and go thru the driver install/updates.

Personally...I'd format and do a clean install. XP takes 20-30 minutes to install...simply swapping the mobo could result in a couple hours of blue screens/lockup/and reboots. If you're smart you have XP on its own partition, so its not like you lose anything important anyway. If not, you might want to consider doing that.

Another important consideration...you'll be working with new hardware. If you do have a problem during the swap, you won't know whether its the old XP or a piece of the new hardware. With new parts, installing the operating system is pretty intensive and if you have faulty parts, its likely to show up there.

 

[mbackof]

I swapped a hard drive with Windows 98 from one motherboard system to another with a different motherboard. It was a mixed bag. I reinstalled all of the drivers and it worked sometimes, but I still got a lot of slowness and blue screens. I would reinstall a clean OS load on that hard drive. Your system will run a lot better that way.

Mike

 

[LRguy]

Thanks for the advice.

I don't want to do a clean install because I don't want to erase my data. And all my drives are pretty much full, I just don't want to waste anymore money on them anymore. I've got 5 already. I think I'll remove the hardware drivers before I do a repair, that sounds like it would give me less hassle with the new motherboard. I've decided to go with an nForce2 Ultra 400.

I decided to go with AMD because I'm very familiar with them. I'm not a fanboy or anything

 

[bocamojo]

You may want to use something like partion magic, and split your drive up into 2 partitions. Then, move all your data to the second partition (say, the E: drive). After that, format your C: partition and install a fresh copy of XP there. You'll still have your old data, and you'll have a fresh OS install, and a clean registry.

 

[StraightPipe]

just load and repair like your were originally instruckted, but I would reccoment backing up any important data first in another PC.

you might end up having to do the reformat to get everything working again. but should be ok without it.

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