Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (
More info?)
81mm wrote:
> You mean the hard drives will fit in the same lots and I can exchange them
> phsycally.., but the different machines won't just crank up and run whatever
> Windows O/S on the hard drive?
Yes the hard drives will physically fit and run.
Why is that.., something to do with the
> BIOS?
Windows tailors itself to the hardware present on installation. If you
move the drive it will likely find new hardware and attempt to install
the appropriate drives. But if the motherboards are not similar enough
it will crash on booting the OS as old initialization routines fail on
the new hardware, and even if they are similar, the result may be an
unstable system with random crashes. You can install the new drive as a
second drive and read and write just fine, but if you want to boot from
it, then it is simplest to just reinstall Windows. This is one
condition where Gateway's reflex advise to reformat and reinstall may be
good advice.
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