moving a hard drive with XP

[iraethan]

I built a machine some time ago and am giving to a friend. He has a legit copy of XP on his old Emachines computer, although it was purchased with his Emachines. He has since moved and left all the software behind. is it possible to load his hard drive into the new computer and install the drivers for the mobo, cpu, cd-rom, etc. without erasing XP and the contents of the hard drive?

I have another copy of XP, but it came from my university and is no longer valid for updating... which means I have the new computer up and running with XP, but this copy will not update, so no Service Pack 1 or 2, or security updates, obviously a problem.

is it possible to solve this problem without having to buy a new copy of XP... which would be a pain so soon before Vista!

[Panama Red]

Nope, the emachines copy is dedicated to that machine. You'll need to buy a new copy of XP. And I'm moving this to the correct forum.

[jayb1234]

Not really.

The emachines load isn't licensed for anything but the original machine, and the other one is expired.

You could try to use the student edition and download the SP2 full install package or order it on a free cd from microsoft and try to install it. I don't know if that would work or not or whether you would be able to get any of the other updates, but i doubt it.

Microsoft has been getting pretty serious about the genuine validation thing lately and you can't even get into windows update untill you install the latest validation checking update.

You are pretty much stuck with getting a new copy of XP.

[one234oclock]

i tried to just exerpt xp from a emachines reboot disc and it didn't work. of course. so i went and bought the xp pro disc