Can I remove an internal drive from one PC and move it to another PC, while keeping it bootable?

gary king

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I've got an old PC which has a hard drive with Windows XP that I'd like to still use. I have a new PC with Windows 7 on it. What I'd like to do is take the old HD, and put it into the new PC as HD 2, so I can dual boot the PC to Windows 7 or XP.

The old PC's specs are an Intel CPU and an ATI GPU (the PC was built around 2006, not by me though so I don't recall the exact specs). The new PC (built by me) uses an Intel CPU and no GPU (it uses onboard graphics). Will the drivers be a problem in this case? Or, at worst, would I just have to install new drivers after I plug the old HD into the new PC? Or would this not work at all?

Thanks in advance!
 
Solution
that wont work the way your want it to because the windows xp is linked to the hardware profile it was registered to. Your best option is to take that drive out and format it and just use as a secondary drive unless you want to pony up the money for windows xp.

goodguy713

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that wont work the way your want it to because the windows xp is linked to the hardware profile it was registered to. Your best option is to take that drive out and format it and just use as a secondary drive unless you want to pony up the money for windows xp.
 
Solution

gary king

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Good point, I forgot about the license. Wouldn't the license give me 30 days to do what I need, though? Is it possible to call Microsoft to transfer the license?
 

gary king

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Alright, so I tried booting it, but I got a blue screen. It said to run chkdsk, so I did (on the external drive containing Windows XP), but that didn't fix the problem. Running XP in Safe Mode didn't work, either; still has the blue screen. So I'll try it back on the old computer then.