Moving old computer's hard drive to new computer

M

MoreDents

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
294
Just to start, sorry for this noobie question... :cool:

Anyways, I want to take an internal hard drive (w/ XP SP2 as the OS) from an old computer and put it in a new computer (that doesn't have a hard drive yet).

Would the new computer be able to run XP instantly? (w/out any activation deal)
Would I be able to start using the new computer off the bat?

Thanks! :D
 
It might work but you'd have quite a few driver problems for a start because the hardware will be very different.

The recommendation is to install a fresh copy of an operating system on a new machine. However, this means you'll have to make a copy of all the data you'd like to keep before formating your drive. It might be worth investing in a new drive for the new system.
 
Oh ok. The entire question is hypothetical. I just wanted to understand the basic principles.

Couldn't I just insert the new computer's motherboard utility/driver CD and get updates off the net?
 
Probably wouldn't even boot. Move the drive, do a repair install from the XP cd, and you'll probably have to reactivate.

If its an OEM copy of XP, its non transferable.

 
I see.

Is it because the hard drive and the motherboard in the old computer are "synced" up in some way that if moved, the hard drive will recognize it's on a new motherboard/computer and not boot?
 
If you change the IDE controllers to "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" before installing the new motherboard there is about a 90% XP will boot with the new motherboard. If that doesn't work, install the new mb and then boot to the windows cd and do a window repair. Using both these methods I have had about a 98% success with transferring a windows xp setup to a new motherboard.

Of course the best approach is to load windows xp fresh and reinstall your programs.
 
MoreDents said:
Is it because the hard drive and the motherboard in the old computer are "synced" up in some way that if moved, the hard drive will recognize it's on a new motherboard/computer and not boot?
Click to expand...

In a word, no. :p It's the operating system on the drive, not the drive itself, that doesn't like the change.
 
MrCrackers said:
If you change the IDE controllers to "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" before installing the new motherboard there is about a 90% XP will boot with the new motherboard. If that doesn't work, install the new mb and then boot to the windows cd and do a window repair. Using both these methods I have had about a 98% success with transferring a windows xp setup to a new motherboard.
Click to expand...
Sounds advanced but seems to work ;)

Concentric said:
In a word, no. :p It's the operating system on the drive, not the drive itself, that doesn't like the change.
Click to expand...

So the OS on the drive will recognize it's on a new mobo and not boot?! That's not cool
 
MoreDents said:
So the OS on the drive will recognize it's on a new mobo and not boot?! That's not cool
Click to expand...

It'll boot BUT the system may be unstable. No matter how clean driver wise you make the OS on that hard drive, you'll still run into some weird performance or stability problems. In addition, if it's a drastic enough hardware change, you may have to reactivate. And if it's an OEM install, you will have to call Microsoft.

So I recommend doing what Concentric recommended. Though try doing a repair install and see what happens.
 
Hmm, ok

Let's take this situation for example.

  • You buy 2 identical computers (without hard drives)
  • You buy a new internal hard drive and connect it to 1 computer. Install the OS, yadda yadda
  • Now, would taking that hard drive and putting it into the other computer lead to any instability?

:)
 
The issue comes from the drivers for the hardware. Windows installs drivers for the old motherboard, and when it boots up with the new motherboard, it will try to use the drivers from the previous motherboard, leading to boot failure. Most of the time it is the IDE driver that causes the problems, which is why switching to the standard driver before moving the drive sometimes works. If the motherboard is significantly different (like a new generation) than more than just the IDE driver might fail, making it almost impossible to get it to work. Moving from an AMD platform to an Intel one is an example of when that might happen. Doing a repair install of Windows lets Windows put new drivers into it's boot sequence, which normally, but not always, fixes the issue while keeping your data. Those old drivers and such are still lurking around though, which can cause instability. Moving from one motherboard to a different but identical motherboard, will normally not cause any problems.
 
To add to that last point, an identical motherboard, identical vid card, identical memory, etc, everything SHOULD be alright. But even so much as a different BIOS revision can make the system look different enough to cause windows confusion. On windows 2k, I moved the harddrive to a different IDE controller and that alone caused the system to boot right into a BSOD. Not sure how much better XP could handle that.

So ultimately, like just about every other hypothetical question, the answer really is "It depends." :D

 
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