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Moving HD with operating system

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7 replies

by danin3d

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I have a question that will hopefully take care of 2 problems. A friend has a hard drive from a n emachines that he wants put in a new system we?re building for him. The problem is that the motherboard is toast in the emachines, so we are going from scratch in putting things together. He is an artist and has no money, and therefore can not afford to buy a new operating system. Can we just plunk the old hd in the new system and use the version of XP that is on the old drive?

I?m almost afraid to hear the answer to this. We really don?t want to re-format the drive ahead of time because he has a lot of art on the drive that we can not access because it?s in his ?my documents? folder and we?re locked out of it.

Any advice or help offered is appreciated. Thank you.

7 replies

by mjd420nova

If he has the CD that came with the E-machine unit, it would be possible to load the old drive into a new unit and then do a repair of the OS from the CD. This would then recharacterize the OS to the new hardware without losing any data stored on the old drive. If that doesn't work or the CD is not available, the old drive could be added as a slave to another system and the info retrieved that way. It could also be added to his new system(OS required) as a slave and then be a second drive on the new system.

by ic-it

One has to wonder how he can afford a new system and no OS as opposed to just a new motherboard ... but I digress.

If the new system's motherboard is a match for the Chipset then you may be ok. If it is not you will either need to slave it (as mentioned in the last post) or run a repair on it.
You will need to take Ownership of the old Directories.

by danin3d

He is trading services as an artist for the parts to build the new rig. I'm actually the one doing the building for him. He's going to end up with just about everything new (to him, parts are used) except for the HDD.

So how does one "take Ownership" of the old directories from the old HDD? I've read something about adding the same username and password to another pc, then slaving the old drive and being able access the folders. Is this true?

by ic-it

If its an Emachine it is likely running XP Home so .....
Plagurized from this link;
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

NOTE: If you are running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, you must start the computer in safe mode, and then log on with an account that has Administrative rights to have access to the Security tab.

1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message (if one appears).
3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
4. In the Name list, click your user name, or click Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group. If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
5. Click OK, and then click Yes when you receive the following message:
You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?

All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.
Note folder name is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of.
6. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and its contents.

by danin3d

Will the fix work the same? I'll follow the link and see if I can find some facts for myself. Not too confident in that though. Well I really hope this solves the issue of the "lost" files on his drive. That art had no backup, so there's a lot of his work that in unaccounted for right now.

Hopefully we'll get as great an answer for the OS issue. Oh, and if this works he's thinking of naming his first child after you. That's cool and all, but I'm not sure how a kid would survive public school with the name 'Bwilmot'.

by ic-it

That would be a rough first name. ;-)

It all depends on the OS you are entering from. If from MCE than I believe you can logon with any admin priv. account (Insure simple file sharing is off - Folder Options - View - Last one listed) Right click on the folder (or entire drive) and follow the steps to take ownership.

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