Upgrading PC new HDD help

maceocc2

Right lads,

I have a PC with windows XP installed but I dont have a recovery disk, im gonna upgrade the necessaries, like the CPU and MOBO and stuff.

The current harddrive is and 80GB IDE and I wanted to upgrade to a SATA is there anyway to get windows from the old to the new.

Thanks lads

Anti

Unless you disable microsofts hardware chang thingy. You will have to do a full reinstall. As when you change certain components like cpu ram or motherboard windows will fail to boot, but you can make a image of the drive with norton ghost or similar, but thats pointless. As windows will load with all the drivers for your old motherboard.

The best thing you can do is just backup all your information you need on a few dvd's or a extrernal hdd ( komplett have a seagate 500gb external for 155€ ) Thn just do a fresh install with your original cd ( if you have it ) if you dont request it from the manufacturer you bought the p c from originally.

Inquitus

Yes,

The easiest way to do this is to upgrade everything and keep the existing Harddrive as your boot drive. After you replace all the components and boot, Windows will tell you to ring a Customer Service number as the system hardware has changed. You explain to them that your old Mobo blew and it was necessary to buy a replacement. They will buy your story and give you the windows activation code and away you go. You can then use Norton Ghost to ghost your IDE HD onto your Sata HD and use that as your new boot drive, reformat the IDE and use as storage.

You will need your XP Key for activation. This is a good utility for extracting it if you do not have the sticker anymore.

http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml

It is easy to uninstall the old drivers and install the new ones.

Inqui

8T8

To change over the HD & keep Windows from being re-installed you need to do this;

Step 1:
Uninstall all drivers for everything in the system that can be.

Step 2:
Bring up the properties of the IDE controllers to which your current IDE drive is attached and click on update driver now select I will choose the driver to use, select the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE controller" driver.

Step 3:
Power off the system & install the new components and use a program like Norton's Ghost to clone the contents of the IDE HD over to the new SATA HD.

Step 4:
Fingers crossed if all goes well it should boot into Windows now install the drivers for your hardware & you will of course have to deal with re-activation.

maceocc2

It worked woohoo, thanks lads, I used acronis 10, To copy from old to new worked a treat and i didnt have to deal with reactivation either