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2 windows directories

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by sterlingellis

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I recently installed a K7s5a motherboard with 1300 AMD processor for upgrade of old computer. Swapped the old hard drive with windows xp to new computer. Upon startup the system came back with missing or corrupt "himem.sys", "dblbuff.sys", "ifshlp.sys" "cannot find win.com, unable to load windows. I would like to reinstall windows xp but there is no way to do it with out doing a clean installation. I tried to install win 98 and found out there are two windows directories. "c:\windows and c:\windows.ooo. What is the cause of swapping a hard drive from one computer to another and getting all of these errors?

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by thechas

First, Windows XP uses hardware identification to set the product activation.

Change the hardware significantly, and you no longer have a valid installation.

What I do when I move a hard drive to a new system, is remove ALL hardware from device manager just before I shut down the old PC for the last time.
This way, Windows starts without trying to install missing hardware.

Here is a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on how to move an XP installation to a different PC.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314070

Remove any spaces from the pasted link.

Since you have tried to install W98, you may have corrupted the root and Windows folders on the drive.

When you first attempt a second installof Windows, the default folder is windows.000

As to repairing your XP installation, what you need to do, is run the "recovery console" from the XP CD.
This way, you can repair an existing installation.

Chas

by sterlingellis

all of your suggestions are good but I found out what the problem was. I attached that hard drive to my computer and my antivirus software started immediately. Thanks.

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