Hard Drive Transfer Question

[ponador]

Sorry if this has been covered before, but I couldn't find the answer.

I am in the process of building a new computer with the following components:

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium MB
AMD 3500 processor
nVidia 6800 GS video card
1GB D400 RAM

I have a 80GB IDE hard drive (Maxtor if I recall corretly)(about 6 months old) from my wife's old Dell Dimension 8200 with P4 2.8 (I think).

What I want to know is if there is any way I can transfer that old hard drive into the new system without a reformat and new windows install, etc......

I need to know specific details on how to do the transfer, if it's even feasible.

I'm fairly tapped out on cash for the holidays and that's why I want to try to cut corners by reusing that older hardrive.

Thank you so much for your time and assistance in this matter.

 

[mpjesse]

You're not going to want to hear this... but the answer your case is no.

There are huge fundimental differences between a Pentium 4 system and AMD system.

There would be way too many changes to your system hardware for Windows to adapt. I doubt Windows would even make it to the splash screen if you tried. And it certainly wouldn't make it PAST the splash screen.

The problem is windows is setup to run on all the correct drivers (motherboard, processor, and a slew of other things). When you try and throw a completely different system at Windows it freaks out and doesn't boot because the drivers don't match the hardware. It won't even boot into safe mode.

My advice would be to back up all your data (documents, photos, video, etc) on a CD/DVD. Whatever programs and settings you had installed are gone forever.

The only thing you can <try> is to reinstall windows. But this is generally not recommended (mostly because it almost never works) AND you'll still loose all your settings/programs/stuff in My Documents. However, if you had any root folders they would still be intact.

Sorry,

-mpjesse

 

[_WW_]

And it gets even worse. If you are trying to install the OS from a disk supplied by Dell it probably won't work in a system other than a Dell.

 

[fishmahn]

You may be able to get it to work if you have a windows XP disk (not a dell recoveryourbloatware disk) and try a repair install first boot, but you may not get past activation, or you may... never tried it so don't know how hard you can push it.

Mike.

 

[ponador]

Thank you all for the replies....I think that it would probably just be best to format the drive and start from scratch.