Tansfering XP?

[Utumil]

I am planning on building a new computer, but would like to use the hard drive out of a current one. This will be the first computer that I am building myself. This new one is going to have a different motherboard, processor, video card, etc., so I am assuming that I cant simply take my old hard drive, put it in, and expect Windows XP to work with it.

My question is do I need to just reformat the hard drive and install XP on the new machine from scratch? I dont particularly care about loosing the data since I have all my important documents and such backed up. If I do that, would I be able to install XP from the system disks of the old computer, or would I have to buy another copy of XP? I guess I just dont know how the activation thing works. I have the XP Certificate and Product Key, but will it let me activate it on this new computer? I would still only have XP installed on a single computer since I will be gutting the old one.

Alternatively, is it possible to just delete all the drivers and stick in the hard drive without reformatting it, and then install the new drivers for the new hardware? I guess what I am really asking is if there is a way to get XP off my old computer and onto my new one without having to buy a second copy.

I guess I have a secondary question as well. The computer I am planning on gutting actually has 2 hard drives. The primary one which has XP installed on it is a 60 GB that came with the computer when I bought it a little over 3 years ago. The second is a 240 GB drive that I bought a few months ago when I started running out of space on the first. Is there any way to make it so that the newer one is the primary one with XP installed on it, again preferably without having to buy a second copy of XP? I am not entirely sure there is any advantage to this, but I figured since it is newer it may run better than the older one. I'm not too sure on the specs of the two hard drives though beyond their capactiy, but I guess I could look them up.

Thanks for any help that you can provide. I'm not looking to do anything illegal, and if I am not allowed to transfer my copy of XP to a different computer I guess I will have to live with that, but I would ideally like to not have to buy a new copy of the OS since I dont have tons of cash.

[HAL9000]

With a direct swap, no, XP will not boot up, don't even try to... but what you can do is boot from your WinXP CD, select install, then repair installation. Once you do that, it will work find and retain your data. You will need to do all MS Updates again when you are done.

You can use a program like GHOST to transfer your data from the old to the new, but it will overwrite your data on the new drive with the old.

[sdkfz]

Hmmm, when you say "If I do that, would I be able to install XP from the system disks of the old computer" do you mean that the computer is a Dell/HP etc and the system disks are 'restore disks" or do you mean that you have an actual MS Win XP OS disk? It can be an upgrade or full install - no matter.

If it is the first the EULA states the license is tied to the Dell/HP etc computer and legally can not be transferred, also the restore disk/XP install is often customized by the OEM manufacturer and you could have problems with the install up to a complete failure since it is looking for a certain OEM motherboard/system configuration etc.

If on the other hand you have a win XP disk then your only worry is if it is an upgrade version and you will need the install disk from the 'upgraded from' OS during the install.

[ITlover]

If you are placing the Hard Disk having windowsxp in your new computer, then I dont think you have to reformat your HD inorder to install windowsxp on it all over again. Your new computer will have different components eg.different vga card, sound card and modem or NIC card so you will have to install the drivers of these components in your windowsxp OS inorder to make your hardware work on windowsxp.
If your new computer has hardware with drivers which were used by windows98, then windowsxp will without any problem detect those hardware and install their drivers automatically .