No USB (so no mouse/keyboard to install drivers) when moving XP SSD to new machine.

Cretster

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Hoping someone can help as this is driving me mad. I'll have to try hard to explain why I have this scenario to avoid helpful intended replies that aren't what I need. If that makes sense!

I have/had an XP machine in my garage which controls various machines (laser cutter/3d Printer/cnc machine etc), and unfortunately it's one machine that didn't have backups unlike my other ones.

Last week the motherboard died (mini ITX Atom dual core board - VIA Epia I think).
Now a friend has kindly donated a Lenovo M72E thinkcentre (a tiny, mini itx core i3 machine) which has windows 7. So I wanted to move the SSD from the dead machine to this new one. The reasons being that because it wasn't backed up, I have tons of specific machine settings and so on, which have taken a long time to sort them all out, and if I just reinstall all those programs it'll take forever to sort out. If I can move the SSD they were all on into a new 'home' though, it'll save me tons of hassle.

Ok, I know it's often an issue to migrate an OS disc, but these days not as often. I had an issue with the hard disc controller causing it to boot loop when I put the XP SSD into the new machine, but fixed that via using Hiren's bood disc.

So the new hardware boots fine now with the old XP SSD that has all my software and settings etc for my garage machines (the whole reason I didn't just do a fresh install).

The problem is that it boots but the drivers are not installed for the new hardware on the old SSD.
Most importantly, it seems the USB ports won't work by default so XP boots fine in the new machine but I have no inputs for it

When it boots, it recognises lots of hardware/devices, and comes up with the window for reinstalling drivers, but I can't tell it to go ahead and install them.
I have all the XP drivers for the Lenovo hardware on a USB stick but this is useless when the USB ports don't work.

I can't remote desktop onto it, or install teamviewer etc to take control from another machine because the ethernet driver also of course are not installed for the new hardware home that the disc is now in.

Now what I CAN do is put this XP SSD into a caddy and plug it into any number of machines as a USB caddy drive, including the Lenovo machine on which I've installed a healthy copy of XP on its own native drive. But I cannot get USB to work on the SSD version of XP as it doesn't have any drivers for this machine.

This might be a very easy thing to get past or a really awkward thing, but if someone can help explain how I can ID and 'preinstall' (for want of a better phrase) the USB port drivers so the SSD version of XP will have working mouse & keyboard I'd be incredibly grateful.

I appreciate the thought behind comments like "just sack it off and install from scratch on the SSD and reprogram your machine settings" - that's not what I'm after, and aside from anything else, it'd deny me a potential chance to learn a new trick.

So if you can help me figure how to manually get the necessary USB driver files in place on the SSD then I'm all ears and very thankful. :)

Cheers!
 
I am not sure if they have USB 3.0 drivers for XP. Does the system have any non 3.0 ports(would not have the SS-USB logo). An image looks like the one under the wireless antenna may be normal usb 2.0. try a keyboard on that port(may allow you to get everything else working via the device manager).

Also you are technically not supposed to move XP from system to system unless you have a retail copy. Many times moving XP causes all kinds of issues.
 

R_1

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all I can think of would be to image the ssd, and convert the XP install into a virtual machine for Virtualbox or VMware.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-a-virtual-machine-image-of-your-existing-hard-drive-windows/

then use the windows 7 install to host the XP VM with all the settings and run the equipment off of the VM.
not exactly easy but its achievable.

this is only available for a retail license.
 

indsup

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Drivers from one motherboard to the other will be different. You will have to install the drivers for the Lenovo chipset to replace the drivers for the Epia. You will also have to uninstall the drivers for the Epia they can conflict with each other.
 

Cretster

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Thanks for all the replies guys - very useful cheers. Appreciate it.

Yeah I guess I could try it as a VM image - hadn't thought of that but I can envisage more mucking about trying to get stuff like USB>serial connections playing nicely with a VM (not based on anything really I just can imagine that happening).

Mcnumpty - have tried copying the DRVstore folder over but it still just has the same issue unfortunately. Worth trying though thanks.

Indsup - yeah that's the whole issue really, what I'm not sure about is when I have the XP SSD plugged into the Lenovo via USB caddy, how to install those Lenovo chipset (and other) drivers onto the external drive, or particularly how I'd identify exactly the right ones to remove. Easy enough when it's a machine that is booted up as you can go to Device Manager and uninstall drivers for each device as required, but when that same drive is just plugged in as a removable disc, it obviously doesn't work like that and I'm not sure how you go about manually adding/removing the right bits in the right places.

Sorry if that sounds dumb!
 
not a free solution

but how about something like laplink pc mover

far as i remember it can move programs from one drive to the other

though whether the stuff you want to move is supported i dont know

you would have to have a read on their website to see if it can do what you need

if you can move what you need to the lenovo drive then clone that drive to the ssd

bit of a hassle but having no mouse and keyboard working means no quick easy solution i can think of

its the same old stupid problem really--you can access your bios with no keyboard driver yet windows wants a driver for your keyboard to work
 

indsup

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Is the os pro version or home? If it is pro version you can remote into it and do what you need from a remote machine. If it is the home version it will be considerably harder. Can you start up in safe mode? If you can you will be able to pick what loads and windows will use the generic driver. This may help you to uninstall the current drivers and install the needed drivers.
 

Cretster

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Thanks guys - mcnumpty - will look up that program and see if this is possible to do it that way, thanks.

Indsup - yeah it's XP Pro. Problem is I can't remote into it without the network driver also being installed.
I can start in safe mode sure but I just get to a login screen for the default user account or admin account, but at this point there is no imput control so I can't get further than this.

I know this is a bit of an uncommon issue and that most people would just do a clean install etc but this is driving me nuts that the whole thing is being scuppered by one basic thing like this! It's crazy.
 

Very strange images they have on the website(may have multiple models similar to what HP does).
2mcylv7.jpg


If they happen to have a typo, you may have a different port near the wireless antenna port.
 



yes quite possibly ,a lot of manufacturers seem to have different specs for same model numbers which makes it more confusing