Laptop to Desktop hard drive transfer

I have a HP laptop with a non booting hard drive. I found out from the main user that the CDRW is not working either. The hard drive passed all the internal HP test , so this is what I would like to do. Pull the hard drive out , hook it up to me desktop , then reformat and reload windows. After the reload transfer the hard drive back to the laptop. Is this possible to do , or is the hardware options windows picks on loading going to clash with the hardware in the laptop ? Different processors , PCI bridge , ETC…

Is it possible to do a non hardware specified loading of Windows XP Home ?