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move hd to new computer

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by cong

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Hi
I know it is not possible to take a hd out of one computer and put into a different computer and expected it to boot up. Is there other way around this. I just want to make sure.

5 replies

by thechas

It should boot, but may lock up do to device conflicts.

The best way around this is to pepare for the new system before moving the drive.
1. download and save onto the drive all of the drivers that will be needed for the new system.
2. Expandany driver file that is zipped.
3. Just before you shut down the old system for the last time;
a. go to add / remove programs, and remove any programs that are directly related to hardware on the PC.
b. right click on my computer,
select properties,
click on the device manager tab.
one at a time remove every hardware device that will be different on the new machine.
Make sure you remove the system devices.

4. When you startup the new machine, the first drivers to load are the drivers for the motherboard / chipset.

This method has worked well for me.

After the new system is running properly, you may want to use a registry cleaner to clear out any remnents of the old drivers in the registry.
I have used both Norton WinDoctor, and Meijenix Fix-It for this.

Enjoy

by curlergirl

This is a very tricky operation with NT, since NT is not a plug 'n play OS, but you could try the method described by TheChas above. However, since NT does not have "Device Manager" per se, you will need to go carefully through your Add/Remove Programs and the applets in Control Panel to remove the critical devices. If your system is a server and has SCSI devices, you will need to move the SCSI controller from the old system to the new one, otherwise it won't be able to detect the boot files. After the new sytem is up and running, if you want to replace the controller, just make sure you install the drivers for the SCSI controller first and then edit your boot.ini to be sure it points to the right device(s). This also can be very tricky. This is not recommended by Microsoft, by the way; their advice is to completely reinstall everything. I have just moved 4 hard drives (including the OS and mirrored drives) from one Win2K server to another and had very few problems, so you mightwant to consider upgrading to Win2K at this point first!! Good luck. . .

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