Moving HD to a new hardware

[Harold]

Hi,
I moved (installed) my HD from my "running well" older pc, with xp pro,
programs, documents and so on, to a new one (new cpu, more memory, new video
and sound card, etc). But when I turned on, I got error message OS LOADING
ERROR, or something like that. Then, I tried Norton Recovery System doing a
MBR fix. No more error message, but now a blinking cursor at top left. I
created a Windows XP boot disk to start the computer, but got a missing
hall.dll. Then I tried a windows repair reinstall, it seemed to go ok but
when the instalation process restarts to continue the instalation the pc
hangs. I'm sure there's a way to recover my system before I do a less smart
clean install. What to do now?
Harold.

 

[Rock]

Hi,
I moved (installed) my HD from my "running well" older pc, with xp pro,
programs, documents and so on, to a new one (new cpu, more memory, new video
and sound card, etc). But when I turned on, I got error message OS LOADING
ERROR, or something like that. Then, I tried Norton Recovery System doing a
MBR fix. No more error message, but now a blinking cursor at top left. I
created a Windows XP boot disk to start the computer, but got a missing
hall.dll. Then I tried a windows repair reinstall, it seemed to go ok but
when the instalation process restarts to continue the instalation the pc
hangs. I'm sure there's a way to recover my system before I do a less smart
clean install. What to do now?
Harold.

Ack..not Nortons. That won't fix this. What you should have done,
instead of trying to boot with it, is do a repair install with the XP
CD. You just can't move a hard drive like that in XP. Hopefully doing
a repair install will fix things. Afterwards you'll need to reinstall
the device drivers for the new hardware and go to the windows update
site and reinstall any service packs and updates depending on what
service pack your install CD is.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

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