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Old hard drive : New Processor/ MoBo

B

beverage

Senior member
Here's the deal.

My sister has a 400 MHz celeron based computer. It has a 6 GB hard drive running Windows XP Pro (self installed).

I have my old computer (850 MHz athlon) sitting here doing nothing, so I figured I'd be nice and upgrade her.

My question. Can I take the hard drive out of the intel comp, put it in the athlon, and boot it up without problem? Or would a fresh format/install be required. She has quite a bit of stuff on there that she needs and I don't really want to have to back up everything before doing the switch unless I absolutly HAVE to.

thanks for any help in advance

 
It should work without a problem. You will need to install all of the drivers that are not included with XP for the new system. On a side note, this should work without a problem but in the long run it is better to do a clean install when changing major pieces of hardware. You will elminate all of the extra drivers from the old hardware and the system will run better.
 
well you are changing completely different cpu's, motherboards, and chipsets

you are just asking for trouble 😉

it *may* work....but wont be too stable most likely

how about putting the hd in your system, dragging the files that you need to keep over to your hd, and formatting?

 
possible...but i guess the main concern is it's more than just files, it's programs as well...and i don't think i could put my finger on all the necessary installation files...
 
update**

I tried this, and I got BSOD upon startup. Telling me if I had added any harddrives or hard drive controlers to disconnect them and restart. So..... WIll I have to reformat?
 
beverage: You should be able to do this without reformatting. (However, it's certainly preferable to do a clean install of WinXP.)

Assuming you want to avoid that, boot up in Safe Mode. Go to Device Manager and uninstall the hard drive and IDE controllers. Reboot and go into the bios and have it detect the hard drive. Then boot all the way into Windows. WinXP will detect the new hardware Have your WinXP CD and mobo CD handy in case your prompted for them.
 
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