Moving XP Drive For Use In New Build

[bigandy]

I recently helped a friend build a new computer and he wants to use the drive from his old HP as the boot drive in the new box. So we took out the drive, put it in the new build and tried to boot it (after configuring BIOS), and windows will not load. Since he also has a new HD as well, I tried using the software that came with the drive (MaxBlast3, for Maxtor Drives) to transfer the contents of the original drive over to the new one, but we still had the same problem. Can anybody help me here?

[Panama Red]

Your old drive is probably looking for all the HP hardware yet because that's the drivers, etc that were originally loaded. Me thinks you have to clean install the XP on the new system so it can recognize your new hardware and assign drivers. If some one else knows a short cut, maybe they'll post for you.

[bigandy]

Very good point, I didn't really think about that, If I were to install all the new Sound, Vid, Modem, etc, drivers before using the old drive in the new box, do you think it would work then? Also, If I did install those drivers, would there be a way to find the device drivers from the HP and remove them?
I should also probably mention that I get the screen that shows XP is loading for a second or two, then it reboots. Don't know if that makes any difference, but I thought it might be important.

[bigandy]

Would this work:
Boot in safe mode (so that none of the drivers are active) then install the drivers for the new vid, sound, etc. then reboot normally?

[glc]

Refer to the thread in this forum about moving a Windows 2000 hard drive - XP is a bit more forgiving but if it doesn't cooperate, you will need to use that procedure.

In a nutshell, you need to do a repair reinstall of XP, you have to recreate the HAL (hardware abstraction layer). If all you have is an HP restore disk, you are out of luck anyway, it's against the EULA to reuse an OEM preinstalled copy of XP on a different computer, it's licensed to that HP machine ONLY and will only work with an HP.

[bigandy]

Thanks for that info glc. I did finally make him get an XP disc and just install the OS on the drive so that he could transfer the old data to the new drive and reformat. Thanks also for that info about the EULA, I didn't realize that.

[imbest123]

Ive tried that but the drivers is an issue. It seems to work but I would rather do a clean install