barebones assembly question about harddrive.

[harleydwarf]

I am going to attempt my first bare bones computer build, and wanted to know if my hard drive from old unit can boot up in new one with different motherboard and processor? Old unit is HP media Center with a pent. 3.1 processor and was thinking of going with AMD64 X2 6000+ 3.0Ghz Dual Core Processor . If all the parts are there will it just recognize hard drive and boot up with the same Windows X P Operating System? New Mother board, memory, Video card, case, power supply, with Old everything else.

[glc]

If it has the Windows that came preloaded on it from HP, it cannot be reused in a different system. That violates the licensing agreement, and it will not boot all the way, it will bluescreen. You are going to have to buy a new copy of Windows, sorry.

[harleydwarf]

Thanks for your input. I will buy a new hard drive and operating system and transfer all my junk then. Thanks.

[glc]

You can reuse the old hard drive - you just have to reformat it.

[David M]

It sounds like you may be thinking about bringing the old files over to the new computer. This can be done. You install the new version of Windows onto your new computer on a new drive. You then plug in your old drive as a secondary drive into your new computer. You then install your software onto your new computer. You can then move your old files relating to the software you just installed, into that software.

After you have transferred your files from your old drive to your new drive, as glc said, you can then reformat your old drive to give you a little more storage.