Transplant my Boot HD to new PC?

September 8, 2006 3:31 PM

Advice please on relocating boot hard drive to new home-built PC and any potential issues with all new hardware.

I have a three+ year old home built PC with XP and wish to build a new one: new mobo, video and sound cards, whistle and bells. I would like to just transplant my existing boot hard drive to be the boot HD of the new one - can I do this without XP freaking? Any potential issues with hardware conflicts - I dont remember what type HD I have (running as I speak), do newer mobo's still accept it's type of connector? XP issues with new hardware configuration?

posted by Kensational to computers & internet (7 comments total)

No doubt there will be issues. I've seen transplants that weren't too bad...I've seen ones that were hopeless. Really, the bottom line is...back up and start from scratch. In the time it takes you to resolve any issues with the transplant you'd probably already be up and running in a brand new...clean...fresh...better performing installation instead of a 3 year old installation with tons of cruft.
posted by crypticgeek at 3:44 PM on September 8, 2006

Boot it up in safe mode first. Seems to help.
posted by devilsbrigade at 3:52 PM on September 8, 2006

Don't bother.

Even if you get it working, you're going to have a lot of junk on your new system like old drivers, you probably will run into conflicts.

Best to backup and wipe clean.

If not, at least uninstall the audio/network/chipset drivers/video drivers before you swap.
posted by mphuie at 4:07 PM on September 8, 2006

Do this on the old machine:

Copy the XP CD to the HD.
Start an upgrade XP install from the new HD copy of the files.
When it reboots for the first time, power down.

Then on the new machine:

Attach the HD and let it boot into setup.
Run though the XP upgrade install.
Hopefully all is nice.

There should be no need to worry about any hardware conflicts or anything like that - the upgrade setup process should take care of all of that and all your setting/programs will still be in place.
posted by ed\26h at 4:17 PM on September 8, 2006

You need to do a repair install, without going into recovery console, in order for Windows to build a new Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), particularly if you are changing processor families with the motherboard swap (Intel --> AMD, P4 to Duo, etc.)
posted by paulsc at 4:25 PM on September 8, 2006

Ditto the repair install. I've done this through two upgrades* and lived just fine. The "old drivers" thing probably won't cause you any trouble, as the repair install forces Windows to re-detect all your hardware. Any old drivers that are no longer needed simply won't be loaded.

* One was a motherboard upgrade, the other was moving from an IDE hard drive to a SATA hard drive.
posted by CrayDrygu at 4:58 PM on September 8, 2006

Here's a guide which has worked for me for 3 years now:

Swapping your board without so much as a reinstall
posted by Coda at 6:09 PM on September 8, 2006