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.