mickeddie

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I posted before and wanted some more info about moving a hard drive to a new build. I would rather NOT re-install the OS and was told I can remove all of the drivers before taking the HD out of the old system. The new system will have a new GPU and no add-on sound card so I know to delete
"Display Adapter" and "Sound, Video and Game Controllers" drivers.

What in device manager can I safely keep? I realize I will have some yellow question marks and can deal with them later. Aside from "computer" what do I HAVE to remove that will pose a real challenge later?

How about "processors" and "system devices"? From the sounds of those they all have to go.

Thanks!

Eddie
 

caamsa

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I believe that if you are moving a hard drive to a new computer you really need to do a clean install of the operating system. You could get away with moving a hard drive with Win 95 and sometimes 98 but If you have 2000 or XP you are going to have a hard time. I don't know if anyone else out there has any opinions or ideas on this but I always do a clean install when putting together a new system.
 

weilin

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pratically all drivers has to go. To put it simply, anything that wont be ported over to the new pc has to be removed. if u go down the lsit of device manager, display adaptors, cd/dvd (unless they r being moved over), floppy, interface things, IDE controllers, networking card, ports, processor, raid/scsi controllers, sound, system devices. all of it. as new board has new northbridge/southbridge thus new devices and new drivers. The most important 1s are audio and video drivers.
 

nobly

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You can get away with it, but its not really worth it. Its much less frustrating to just do a clean install than to deal with all of the issues involved.
And it'll probably take more time to deal w/ the issues than to just reinstall.... besides, you'll have a fresh install that way.
 

mickeddie

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After doing a clean install is there a way to use Windoes FAST wizard to wirelessly send the files from the old system to the new one? I have a 40gb HD lying around that I can hook up to my current system for FAST and then plug it into the new system to restore my data if I have to.
 

caamsa

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Now I am certainly no expert on this but yes you can transfer files from your old drive to the new one. Some times I even put the old drive in the new computer as a second drive. Then I transfer the files I want to save and format the old drive.

Then I can store pictures, music, etc. on the drive. I don't know what operating system you are using but if you have XP and your filing system is FAT 32 and the files you have on the drive are fat 32 then you should be ok. Just dont try to move fat 32 to NTFS and vice versa or you will have problems.

I have a 60 gig hard dirve that I made into a stand alone hard drive. I use it for pictures and music so I save space on my main drive. I hope what I said makes sense and was helpful.
 

ches111

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You most definetly need to do a fresh install...

The differences will be just enough to cause you all sort of pain and once install is complete I would think that it would be much slower than what you may have expected (with all the previous baggage laying around)...

Using the older drvie to backup and transfer files is an excellent idea that will reap very good/quick rewards.... The 40gb drive will be much quicker than other backup medium.

Once you get your final install done and ready for use/tweaked you should try using the 40gb drive to act as a ghost drive for the primary OS install.
 

mickeddie

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Just dont try to move fat 32 to NTFS and vice versa or you will have problems.

I don't know if my old HD is fat32 or ntfs. Does this matter with the FAST wizard as well? I can always re-format the old drive if I have to.
 

caamsa

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Honestly I have never used FAST Wizard or sysprep before so I can't really say what the end result will be. I know though that you are not supposed to mix fat32 and NTFS files for some reason. I am sure there is some real techie who can explain it much better than I can.

I have used ghost which usually comes on the CD rom when you buy a new hard drive. In my system now I have two drives. One is my main one and the other is a back up. I copy main drive to the back up drive every now and then that way if the one drive goes bad I have a back up.

Even if your main drive goes down and you have a cheesy back up drive of only 20 or so gigs then all you need to do is buy a new drive then copy the back up to the new one and you are back in business. Is saves you a lot of head aches in the long run. But I think you really need to start with a nice clean install. :wink:
 

SomeJoe7777

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Honestly I have never used FAST Wizard or sysprep before so I can't really say what the end result will be. I know though that you are not supposed to mix fat32 and NTFS files for some reason.

Don't know where you heard this, but it's not correct. There is no such thing as a "FAT32" file or an "NTFS" file. FAT32 and NTFS are file systems. They are each a method of organizing files on disk. There is no problem having a partition of each type on your computer, and no problems copying files between them.

The only oddity you might run into is the fact that NTFS supports file and folder-level security permissions, and compression. If you copy files from an NTFS partition to a FAT32 partition, the security permissions will be lost, and the file will be uncompressed. But that's the only issue. The file itself will be on the FAT32 partition just fine (although now all users will have full read/write/change/delete permissions on it).

As to the original poster's question, yes it is possible to move an existing Windows installation from one computer to another. How many issues you will have afterwards and how much trouble it is to do are functions of how different the two computers are. What chipset, processor, sound, video, and network controllers were on the original motherboard, and what chipset, processor, sound, video, and network controllers are on the new motherboard? If you can answer that, I can give you some other pointers.
 

mickeddie

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What chipset, processor, sound, video, and network controllers were on the original motherboard, and what chipset, processor, sound, video, and network controllers are on the new motherboard? If you can answer that, I can give you some other pointers.

Old
875p chipset
Prescot 478 3.2ghz
SB Live
Nvidia GPU
From Dell: The PowerEdge 400SC contains an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller (8254X) which is integrated onto the motherboard, capable of 10/100/1000Mbps speeds, half and full duplexing, and supports load-balancing and fault-tolerant teaming solutions. This NIC supports ACPI, WOL (wake on LAN) and PXE (network boot). This NIC is IEEE 802.3 compliant.

new
Chipset on Asus P5W DH - 975x
Core 2 Duo
On board sound
ATI GPU
On board network (Asus P5W dh)
 

ches111

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I'm with weilin....

Fresh install is best... then use the old drive to ghost your install as I said before... You can even take the old drive out of the box and hide it somewhere or put it in the safe...


Ghost = Norton Ghost.... A unique backup utility that basically clones an image of your drive in an easily recoverable format...
 

Mobius

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These people who are advocating your waste 20-30 hours of your OWN TIME obviously have NEVER moved an XP installation to a new machine. They are very free with YOUR time, but not so free with their own I suspect!

It works PERFECTLY.

XP is not a panicky child that refuses to work when stuffed in another box.

Hell, you don't even NEED to remove all the drivers - although if you don't, you will probably have to reboot the PC about 20-40 times as it tried to resurrect itself inside a new body.

It is best practice to remove all drivers before shutting XP down for the final time in the old box.

NO - XP doesn't "hang on" to old drivers. It won't "slow the system down". It doesn't "break windows to move it to a new box".

(But you almost certainly WILL have to re-activate Windows XP - and it might require a phone call to M$. When you call, you must be VERY insistent that they simply give you an activation code . Tell them your CPU and Motherboard blew up due to a faulty PSU - sounds plausible - and that the odl PC has been sold as parts.)

XP is a very flexible OS and it is elementary to move it to a new box.

Save yourself a bunch of hassle and just shift it.
 

SomeJoe7777

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Old
875p chipset
Prescot 478 3.2ghz
SB Live
Nvidia GPU
From Dell: The PowerEdge 400SC contains an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller (8254X) which is integrated onto the motherboard, capable of 10/100/1000Mbps speeds, half and full duplexing, and supports load-balancing and fault-tolerant teaming solutions. This NIC supports ACPI, WOL (wake on LAN) and PXE (network boot). This NIC is IEEE 802.3 compliant.

new
Chipset on Asus P5W DH - 975x
Core 2 Duo
On board sound
ATI GPU
On board network (Asus P5W dh)

This is doable. What you will essentially do is remove the drivers for each of the old pieces of hardware one at a time, move the hard drive to the new machine, start up, and reinstall the drivers for the new hardware. After everything is installed, we'll do one more procedure to clean up.

First things first: Back up everything you can't afford to lose. There is risk associated with this procedure. I take no responsibility if you lose data. This procedure is for convenience only, and isn't guaranteed to work properly in all circumstances.

1st, on the old machine, we're going to remove the old drivers. During this process (especially after restarts) you will see the found new hardware wizard pop up. Cancel it each time you see it.

1. Remove the NVidia drivers (Add/Remove Programs).
2. Remove the Creative Soundblaster drivers (Add/Remove Programs).
3. (This is the critical step). We're going to change the Intel IDE driver to a generic driver.
3a. Go into Device Manager.
3b. Expand the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers"
3c. Right-click the "Intel 82801EB Ultra ATA Controller" entry, and click on "Update Driver".
3d. The Hardware Update Wizard will start. Click "No" to "Connect to Windows Update to search for a new driver" and click Next.
3e. Click "Install from a List or Specific Location" and click Next.
3f. Click "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install" and click Next.
3g. Click the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" and click Next.
3h. When the driver finishes installing, click OK.
4. Shut down the machine, remove the hard drive.
5. Transfer the hard drive to the new machine, hook it up.
6. On the new machine, in the system BIOS, make sure your IDE controller is in Legacy/IDE Emulation mode, NOT SATA/AHCI mode. (If you get a STOP 0x0000007B error/blue screen on the next bootup, then it isn't. Recheck your BIOS settings).
7. Your new machine should boot into the existing Windows XP installation. The Found New Hardware Wizard will run multiple times on the first bootup to install/reinstall a lot of system devices. Make sure you let it completely finish doing everything (may take several minutes). Also, XP may ask you to reactivate at this point. If so, call Microsoft and do it - it's no big deal, I've done it multiple times.


OK, now we're going to install drivers for all your new hardware.

8. Install the network drivers for the ASUS on-board networking from the ASUS CD.
9. Once the network is up and running, get on the Internet, download the latest chipset drivers from ASUS for this motherboard (or from Intel for the 975P chipset) and install them. This will also update the IDE drivers to the Intel-specific ones for the ICH8/ICH8R.
10. Install drivers for the ATI video card.
11. Install drivers for the on-board sound.


And now, we'll do a cleanup procedure to remove all traces of the old hardware and drivers.

12. Open a command prompt, and type the following exactly as shown and hit enter:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

At the same command prompt, type the following exactly as shown and hit enter:

start devmgmt.msc

13. Device manager will open. In the "View" menu, select "Show Hidden Devices".
14. You will see devices listed under virtually every category that are light colored/transparent, indicating they are not present.
15. One by one, right-click each device that is light colored, and click "Uninstall", except for any devices listed under "Non Plug-And-Play Drivers". Do NOT touch anything under that category.
16. Close device manager and the command prompt. Restart.

You should now be running on your new hardware. If you now want to change the mass storage controller to SATA/AHCI mode, follow the procedure in the Hard Disk forum called "Switching Storage Controllers w/o Reinstalling Windows".

The reason I like this procedure over SysPrep is that SysPrep requires the mass storage controllers on the machines to be identical. This procedure allows you to move to a different mass storage controller provided that it can operate in IDE mode, even if the mass storage controller is a different manufacturer.
 

Crashman

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I used to go through all the work to move a drive without re-installing, but I've found that a new instal is just as fast, when you know what you're doing. I just copy over my old user profile, any other directories that I've saved outside my own files, and then re-install applications
 

mickeddie

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Mobius...I was thinking about what you said and as long as I backup my important data I will just move the HD and see what happens. Worse comes to worse I can reinstall Windows AFTER I try it the way that sounds eaiser.
:wink:
 

PCcashCow

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XP is a very flexible OS and it is elementary to move it to a new box.

If that were true these forums would be empty( except the rants and raves)and an industry built around MS's faults and boundaries would collapse.