Building a new PC with old Windows XP HDD

[chnapo]

Hi guys, I have a very specific need. I need to build a new PC that will work without reinstalling Windows XP. My friend has an old PC with Windows XP and expensive software that she uses for work. She has no installation media for that software (it is 20 years old) and she cannot get new installation media since the SW is too outdated, eventhough she has legal licence for all of it (the only option would be to buy licence for new SW for like 20k). That PC of hers is old and it is crashing very often. I tried PSU replacement, HDD replacement (I cloned her old HDD on a new one), now we are going to replace GPU, but it seems that sooner or later we will have to replace motherboard. IDK if I will be able to get motherboard with Intel Pentium Extreme, so I am thinking about buying a new mobo, new CPU and RAM. The thing is, that I cannot reinstall windows, because she would lose all data, I simply have to put the HDD with the old system into new PC and it has to work.

Question is - do I have to use exactly same hardware as she has now (just buy it in better condition), or it will work with some new HW (let's say 3rd or 4th generation i5, H97 chipset, DDR3 ram or so).

She will retire soon (in a few years), but that HDD with that Windows XP installation simply has to work until then, using whatever HW possible. I can backup it, clone it to a new one, but not reinstall. She does not earn enough for 20k investition to pay off until her retirement.

 

[hang-the-9]

Yes your best bet is to use the same computer model and just swap the drive into it.

 

[Boldur20]

Dude xp is completely obsolete.

 

[Calvin7]

Last Intel Chipset to support XP was Series 7. The H97 is Series 9.

 

[USAFRet]

Two options:

1. Build a new PC of the same XP era components

2. Virtualize the existing OS and applications, and run it in a VirtualBox VM guest, in a modern Win 10 system.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-a-virtual-machine-image-of-your-existing-hard-drive-windows/

 

[Randi Poling]

You cant just use the Windows XP HDD on a new machine, it will not boot to Windows at all. 2 Options like above:

Build a new machine from like components
Image it on a new machine in a VM.

 

[jr9]

As the PC has a GPU I can assume she is using software that requires graphics acceleration. If so, this is something where virtual machines will have issues. They run with a limited amount of graphics memory (128MB in VirtualBox) so using heavy 3D applications isn't going to work well if you need more than that. GPU passthrough is possible but very difficult to implement in virtual machines. If it isn't 3d software, then VM using an image of the drive might work. I'd recommend trying it over building a new PC from 10 years ago.

If the motherboard needs to be replaced I would try to get one that is the same model. If it's an OEM this becomes very difficult. You can find 775 era motherboards on eBay still and if it was the same chipset you may be able to swap the board out and move the RAM+CPU into it and still be able to boot into Windows. If the board is very different then you might have issues inside the OS but you CAN boot a Window install on a completely foreign motherboard. If Windows has drivers for the old motherboard that is when you potentially will have problems.