Moving a hard disk to another PC

[Guest]

I am in the process of building a new PC and would like to move all the
files, settings and programs from the PC it is replacing. The old PC has
windows home OEM and the new one will have a retail upgrade(I have a legit
windows 98 licence and disc). Would I be able to clone the new hard drive,
and then do a repair install with the retail windows, so that the correct
versions of windows are on each PC. Or am I going to have to do a clean
install and reinstall everything from scratch? Or is there an easier way?

 

[Jon_Hildrum]

Please Try Michael's pages for some information

http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html


Perosnally, I would strongly recommend saving all data files, unique drivers
and other items you may have. Then perform a clean install

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

I am in the process of building a new PC and would like to move all the
files, settings and programs from the PC it is replacing. The old PC has
windows home OEM and the new one will have a retail upgrade(I have a legit
windows 98 licence and disc). Would I be able to clone the new hard drive,
and then do a repair install with the retail windows, so that the correct
versions of windows are on each PC. Or am I going to have to do a clean
install and reinstall everything from scratch? Or is there an easier way?

Roberto,

have a look at http://winhlp.com/WxMove.htm for more information
about moving the system to new hardware.

Hans-Georg

 

[Mike Hall, MS-MVP]

Roberto

Clean install onto your new PC.. Boot from the upgrade CD, and insert the
Win 98 CD when asked for qualifying material..

Then install all of your other stuff from original installation media..

Repair installs do not always go the way they should, and can result in
wasted effort..

For more, go to http://www.michaelstevenstech.com

 

[Guest]

There are pro's and con's for transferring or starting from scratch.

If you intend to try transferring, go into Control panel FIRST (on the old
PC) and change the IDE driver to "Standard PCI IDE Driver" if it's a
manufacturer-specific type. The standard driver should work on most mobos,
where as a mobo-specific one will cause XP to crash early in the startup
process with a 'bootdisk inaccessible' message.

Provided you take this precaution, the transplanted XP should start on most
mobos, and once it's running you can do a hardware-detection to get
everything right.

It wil of course demand activation too, unless it's started in safe mode.
This can be a catch-22 if the network isn't up-and-running at that stage.
(Although you can of course use the phone method)

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll bite the bullet and reload from
scratch. Problem is it loses a days work reloading all the programs and
data. :-(

 

[Guest]

This may be of help to others. I finished assembling the new PC and then
used my Ghost image to restore the software onto the new hard disk. Windows
booted, found new hard ware and came up with assorted messages about
reactivation etc. I Ignored these messages and did a repair install with a
slipstreamed SP2 version of my upgrade CD. This worked fine, the sound
drivers and google earth needed a reinstall, but once I had done that and a
scan disk all seems to be well.