change hard drive to one with XP pre-installed

[John Earle]

Hello. Does someone know a workaround for this? The hard drive containing
the OS in my computer has failed - it is dead, the BIOS does not see it at
all. From another computer, I have taken the hard drive which has XP Pro SP2
(fully legal and activated) on it and put it into my main computer. After
the BIOS loads, Win XP tries to start but before anything happens it just
drops and the computer restarts. There is a very brief flash of a blue
screen but it disappears too quickly to see what it says. Clearly XP is
recognising that the hardware is different but would that stop the OS loading?

The other factor is that the hard drive has Norton Go Back on it but I have
just let that load the latest configuration.

What I want to achieve is to use this installation of XP to be the OS
without having to completely reinstall it. There are lots of programs and
documents on this hard drive that I wish to continue using.

Any suggestions?

John

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with XP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

---------------------------------------------------------------

:

Hello. Does someone know a workaround for this? The hard drive containing
the OS in my computer has failed - it is dead, the BIOS does not see it at
all. From another computer, I have taken the hard drive which has XP Pro SP2
(fully legal and activated) on it and put it into my main computer. After
the BIOS loads, Win XP tries to start but before anything happens it just
drops and the computer restarts. There is a very brief flash of a blue
screen but it disappears too quickly to see what it says. Clearly XP is
recognising that the hardware is different but would that stop the OS loading?

The other factor is that the hard drive has Norton Go Back on it but I have
just let that load the latest configuration.

What I want to achieve is to use this installation of XP to be the OS
without having to completely reinstall it. There are lots of programs and
documents on this hard drive that I wish to continue using.

Any suggestions?

John

 

[DL]

A repair installation of winxp and install the correct drivers.
And that assumes the win installation is not an OEM thats is locked to the
origonal PC

 

[John Earle]

Thank you very much for both replies. Most helpful.

John

 

[John Earle]

My thanks also covered your reponse - most helpful.

John