Moving HD with WinXP to new mobo

[HepDude]

Hi!

My Soyo Dragon + is arriving tomorrow, and I'm going to move the hard drive with WinXP that I'm using right now directly to that motherboard.

Motherboard, processor and memory will be new, other devices should be the same.

Should I do the traditional deleting of everything in the Device Manager before moving the HD?

Or is this no longer necessary in WinXP, and I should just move the HD and let it figure out on its own that things have changed?

Thanks!

 

[vaughanie]

i did this recently and XP wouldn't boot it had major problems i had to format.

thing was though i was going from an AMD Athlon to an intel P4, this might not be your case and i think it is fundamental.

good luck with it!

 

[jcmkk]

Delete everything in device manager. I've never tried moving HDs with Windows XP, but it is better safe then sorry.

 

[Fastball]

Why not just back-up, then reformat?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Why not just back-up, then reformat? >>



Because it makes too much sense

 

[bacillus]

<<

<< Why not just back-up, then reformat? >>



Because it makes too much sense >>


LOL

 

[HepDude]

Backup and reformat ...

- would take a lot of time
- would take a lot of CD-Rs
- if a reinstall is required, would require an "activation"

Just hooking up the HD, and booting is a lot simpler.

 

[Psychoholic]

I've done this several times in W2K, and never had any problems so I see no reason XP wouldn't succeed. First backup your important files, otherwise it's certain to fail due to Murphy's law. Then as jcmkk has mentioned delete everything in Device Manager, shutdown and move the drive.

I always recommend a fresh installation over an upgrade, but since you're just changing the hardware instead of upgrading the OS this method should be fine. Like I said, I've never had any problems doing this, but be prepared for the worst just in case.....

 

[ChrisADuffy]

Reformating is the best option here without a doubt.

 

[GregMal]

Please tell us how it works out........Very interested..............
Greg

 

[Samsonid]

>Delete everything in device manager

Guys.... guys.. I wish people were a little more specific.

You can't delete the System Devices.

When I tried in the past to move the hard drive to a new machine I wiped clean the entire device manager (thats the meaning of "everything") and... then windows would no longer boot.
In the end I had to reformat anyway.

 

[HepDude]

BTW, I should mention that with both WinME and WinXP, I have moved the HD back and forth between two motheboards of different brand, but with the same chipset (KT133) without even deleting anything in the Device Manager, and it worked without problems.

This is why I'm interested in moving it to the Dragon+ without doing a whole format and reinstall - I'll gve Psychoholic's suggestions a try - after all, I can always reformat !

 

[Psychoholic]

<< Guys.... guys.. I wish people were a little more specific.
You can't delete the System Devices. >>


There will only be one thing that you are not given the option to delete, or uninstall if you want to get technical. However it should pose no problems. I'm not saying this will always work because much will depend on the differences between the old motherboard and the new. However, I have performed this sucessfully, without fail, dozens of times.

 

[HepDude]

I was just reading the Soyo newsgroup, and the same question was posed - and someone replied that what worked for them was to do an install-on-top of Windows - this would install the correct drivers and files for the new board, but leave everything else on the HD. Sounds plausible.

 

[SuperT]

i have just done an upgrade here at work with XP pro and moved from a P!!! 1GHz, Shuttle mobo, and 256 MB of SD ram to a AMD athlon XP 1.7, Epox 8k7a, and 256 MB of DDR. I was able to boot up and XP found all of the drivers it needed straight away.