Stevenjr said:
My friend's hard drive recently crashed. He mailed his drive and disks to me
and I discovered that his registry was corrupt. I setup his drive as a
secondary drive on my computer and moved all of his important files to my
hard drive, formatted and re-installed windows on his drive using his disk.
I sent it back to him and when he turned his computer on windows will not
load and he receives the following message: “Windows can not load, this maybe
due to a recent hardware or software change...â€
Yes, that's exactly what would happen unless your computer happens to
be identical to his.
Normally, and assuming a retail license (many OEM installations are
BIOS-locked to a specific chipset and therefore not transferable to a
new motherboard - check yours before starting), unless the new
motherboard is virtually identical (same chipset, same IDE controllers,
same BIOS version, etc.) to the one on which the WinXP installation was
originally performed, you'll need to perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place
upgrade) installation, at the very least:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341
The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with
licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point.
You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If
you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a
Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style
foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it,
is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any
old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it
"tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the
reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable
than the Win9x group.
As always when undertaking such a significant change, back up any
important data before starting.
This will also probably require re-activation, unless you have a
Volume Licensed version of WinXP Pro installed. If it's been more than
120 days since you last activated that specific Product Key, you'll most
likely be able to activate via the Internet without problem. If it's
been less, you might have to make a 5 minute phone call.
What should I do to help him
bring his computer online?
If he's not comfortable performing a repair installation, advise him to
take the computer to a professional repair technician.
--
Bruce Chambers
Help us help you:
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
