New MB with Old Boot Drive?

[Ernest T]

I recently fried my MB and have decided to upgrade to new MB going from AMD to Intel CPU in the process. Can I simply move my old Boot drive to the new system? I realize that I will have to update all the drivers, so I was planning on running the Windows repair program from the origninal XP installation CD at the first boot. Will this work? Thanks!

[4th&3wood]

Problem with moving hard drive

When you take a hdd with a Windows OS installed on it that you have been using on one computer and then install it as a master in another computer you are asking for major problems. The excerpt below is from a Intel article which describes in detail what happens. The article also mentions a reference to an article by Microsoft, it can be seen here .

"Moving a hard drive with Windows* 2000 or Windows XP* already installed to a new motherboard without reinstalling the operating system is not recommended.

If a hard drive is moved to a new computer, the registry entries and drivers for the mass storage controller hardware on the new motherboard are not installed in Windows for the new computer and you may not be able to start Windows. This is documented in Microsoft's knowledge base article. This is true even if you move the hard drive to a motherboard with the same chipset, as different hardware revisions can cause this issue as well.

Additionally, moving a hard drive to a new motherboard may not exhibit any errors until you install new IDE drivers. This is because each chipset uses a different Plug-n-Play (PNP) ID to identify it. If you move your motherboard, your registry will have multiple PNP IDs (for the old hardware as well as the new hardware). If there are multiple entries in the registry, Windows cannot determine which hardware to initialize and therefore fails with a STOP error."

[4th&3wood]

Well that's not cool, thirty minutes later I can't edit my post? Oh well...

I had wished to add the following to the previous post.

Alternatively, this method can be tried, but I would back up all of your important files to removable media like CDs, DVDs, Flash drives, or a second hdd no matter what you decide to try.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

[Ernest T]

Thanks for your response. It looks like I may be better starting from scratch, but I really dread reinstalling all my programs.

Thanks again for the info. You probably saved me some headaches!

[caperjack]

i have done a repair install many time, in doing what you are doing ,although i do recommend a fresh install, i have done the repair on many of my customers computer [that i didn't want to do a fresh install of all programs for one reason or another ]and some have been used that way for the past 2-3 yrs with out any major problems .mind you none have been so dramatic as your cpu maker change

[forumdude123]

fresh install=best option
move and repair=next best thing, retains most data. backup no matter what you choose to do.

i recently moved a hard drive to a pc with everything else new (case, mobo, ram, cpu, video card, etc) and had no problems booting up. but i needed to activate, and it probably wouldn't b/c it was an oem copy. so, i installed vista. lived happily ever after

[caperjack]

usually when you need to activate and it won't ,you just call microsoft and give a bit of bull about the motherboard dying and so on and they will ok it ,have every time i call in such case

[forumdude123]

yeah, i know that caperjack. i had the same issue with vista, and the automated activation via phone worked great!! i just wanted vista. xp is bs.

[The New Normal]

Don't you need to lay a bit of 'ground work' before doing a move&repair? If so, the OP may be out of luck. Or is it something where you have to just try and it either works or it doesn't?

By repair, do you mean using windoze own 'repair' function?

[caperjack]

By repair, do you mean using windoze own 'repair' function?

briefly ,yes .
like this .
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/operatingsystems/ss/instxprepair1.htm

[Quargar]

I always have 4-5 junkpiles in my room (PII-III) and moving the boot drive to another comp has always worked, a few drivers won't work, but it has always booted into windows in ME, 2000, and XP.