Transferring Hard Drive

[grievingexistence]

Ok so I currently have my OS and everything on my current hard drive inside my E-machines. Its a WD Sata, 160 gig. I'm going to to building a new machine within a few weeks. I'm using the Hard Drive, Cd rom, and DVD-RW drive out of the E-machines in the new build. I want to know if I can transfer the hard drive with OS and data to the new build without having to reformat and such. Yes, I am buying a copy of XP as I realize the E-machines recovery discs will do nothing for me. I've heard things such as you can uninstall the IDE drivers then transfer the drive over, and simply reinstall windows, then continue with your new motherboard and chipset drivers. How exactly would I do this? Just Uninstall everything under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, shut down, and transfer? or what?

[glc]

In this case, you need to boot with your new copy of XP and do a repair reinstall. Once in Windows, you will have to use Magic Jellybean to change your CD key to the new one, then activate Windows.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=151522