Moving hard drive from one computer to another.

[sirstarvsalot]

I just built my new computer, but I'm having problems installing windows XP on it due to bad widnows XP cds. I am thinking of just moving my old harddrive with windows xp installed already on it into my new computer. What problems will I encounter while doing this? I can only think of one real one, and that would be massive confilic errors and driver errors. Since my old HD will be set up with the drivers for all my old hardware. My friend told me to run sysprep and I wouldn't have any problems, but how do I do that? And will that fix the problem? Anything else I should know if I'm planning to do this?

 

[J1600B]

I'm pretty sure Windows XP won't let you change massive amounts of hardware because it suspects drive cloning/piracy. I tried using my old install after changing mobo, cpu and ram and it would start loading windows then give a bsod and reboot.

 

[minerat]

Your PC didn't bluescreen because of piracy, it bluescreen because of the crazy difference in drivers. Most likely it was an inaccessible boot device BSOD. You can try moving the hard drive to the other PC, but just MAKE SURE it's on the same IDE CHANNEL at the same setting (MASTER or SLAVE). It's easiest for it to have been primary master.

 

[NEWKILLA]

Good thread--just saved my azz a butt load of trouble

i just got a HD- back from rma and was going to prep it for

a new board i m waiting on, i guess i ll just be patient and wait for

the new board, i ll be using 2000 pro, does this apply to all O/Ses ??????


thanks

KILLLLLLAAAAAA

 

[sirstarvsalot]

What about sys prep, will that work? And what exactly is it? where do I get it?

 

[ericboo]

I would not advise doing so, unless both boards use the same chipset. I had it work successfully only once with a Windows ME install, but all W2K and XP swaps like that got BSOD's trying to boot into Windows. Not worth the hassle. Try cleaning your XP disks and then maybe making a working backup.

 

[ElFenix]

i changed from a kt266a to an nforce2 and i did have to repair windows but i suspect part of that was due to the kt266a corrupting files. and then i had to call MS because i didn't have a network driver installed. later when i installed the latest mobo drivers i had to call MS again. THAT was stupid.

 

[overclock]

Here are some instructions for this process.....

 

[SkyDiver]

Just a week ago, I moved my drives from a KT133 (Abit KT7-Raid) to an Asus A7N8X Deluxe with virtually no hiccups whatsoever. (New CPU, new chipset, new RAM, new on-board LAN, new on-board sound. Hardware was very different)

Before you do it, you need to remove as many hardware-related drivers as possible. For instance, instead of using VIA's 4-in-1 drivers, you want to use generic windows drivers. Uninstall video drivers, etc.

There was an article online about how to do it. If you like, I can look at the print out when I get home tonight and give you the link.

After you fire up, you go to a dos prompt to open up a system-related utility and delete all "ghosted" hardware that WinXP still detects. I've done this under Win98 too. The trick there is to boot up in safe mode and then delete all your hardware and let Windows detect it all again.

 

[sirstarvsalot]

Thank you for all your help, I think im gonna try it. Skydiver, if you could give me the link to that article as well I'd appreciate it.

 

[SkyDiver]

OK. I won't be home for another 5 hours or so.

 

[sirstarvsalot]

Originally posted by: SkyDiver
OK. I won't be home for another 5 hours or so.

alright, I might do it again, but my friend could use it also.

 

[KF]

For my primary OS, I always keep my Windows installation. I have done this since Windows 3.0, if anybody remembers that. Mostly it has gone smoothly. Once it was a bear, and I had to delete all my drivers in Device Manager a second time around to get things right. What happened was everything was supposedly workng correctly according to Device Manager, but a couple of things actually did not work.

Not long ago I checked out a mobo (nForce chipset) for someone using a spare HD, because there was a delay in getting all the right parts, and I needed to make sure what we had was OK in case I had to exercise time-limited return privileges. When that was done, just to see what would happen, I put that HD with a totally different mobo (SIS 735 chipset). I was going to delete all the devices in Safe Mode, but I missed the F8 key and XP booted. It took about 2 minutes longer to boot, but it did, and everything worked. (except the onboard sound and LAN for which XP had no drivers.) Amazing. It checked out fine with all my stress programs.

I think what happens for people that get a BSOD is that XPs detection system does not figure out one of the drivers is wrong and XP goes ahead and uses it.

 

[SkyDiver]

Here is the link, as promised. Sorry for the long delay.

Here

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Thanks a lot. I bookmarked that li nk since I'll be upgrading in a month or so!
:beer:Skydiver:beer:

 

[NEWKILLA]

awesome bud

:beer::wine::beer::wine::beer:



thanks much



killlllaaaaaa