Re: replacing motherboard questions
- From: Bruce Chambers <bchambers@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:55:31 -0600
augie wrote:
I have computer with a mother board from an HP Vectra VL400 with a 1000 meghertz Intel Celeron and a 200G harddrive. With an authentic XP home operating system. No disks, I bought it used. But I have the needed home edition codes. Slow but I like XP. I just bought a used Gateway E-2000 with a Pentium 4 and a very small, very noisy hard drive, and all the disks for Window 2000. Much faster than my old one. I would like to move my hard drive with XP Home into the Gateway E-2000. How do I do that? I tried just moving the harddrive into the Gateway and that did not work? any suggestions??
Buy a legitimate WinXP license, to start.
Normally, and assuming a retail license (many factory-installed OEM installations are BIOS-locked to a specific chipset and therefore are *not* transferable to a new motherboard - check yours before starting), unless the new motherboard is virtually identical (same chipset, same IDE controllers, same BIOS version, etc.) to the one on which the WinXP installation was originally performed, you'll need to perform a repair (a.k.a. in-place upgrade) installation, at the very least:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341
Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with WinXP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html
The "why" is quite simple, really, and has nothing to do with licensing issues, per se; it's a purely technical matter, at this point. You've pulled the proverbial hardware rug out from under the OS. (If you don't like -- or get -- the rug analogy, think of it as picking up a Cape Cod style home and then setting it down onto a Ranch style foundation. It just isn't going to fit.) WinXP, like Win2K before it, is not nearly as "promiscuous" as Win9x when it comes to accepting any old hardware configuration you throw at it. On installation it "tailors" itself to the specific hardware found. This is one of the reasons that the entire WinNT/2K/XP OS family is so much more stable than the Win9x group.
As always when undertaking such a significant change, back up any important data before starting.
This will also probably require re-activation, unless you have a Volume Licensed version of WinXP Pro installed. If it's been more than 120 days since you last activated that specific Product Key, you'll most likely be able to activate via the Internet without problem. If it's been less, you might have to make a 5 minute phone call.
--
Bruce Chambers
Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell
The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot
.
- Prev by Date: Re: How do you reinstall the security suite?
- Next by Date: Re: Licence numbers?
- Previous by thread: Re: replacing motherboard questions
- Next by thread: Re: Licence numbers?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|