New build, old HDD

[mickeddie]

Next month (or sooner if I can "hide" my final purshcase from my wife ) I will be building my first machine. I will be transferring my current HDD to the new system. When I hook everything up I guess I boot from the CD that comes with the mobo? Then I can just reboot from the HDD and everything should be ok, right?

Thanks!

Eddie

 

[fredgiblet]

You don't need to boot from the CD that came with the mobo. It should boot without any assistance.

But you WILL need to re-activate Windows XP (which shold be a lot of fun). Personally I would take this as an opportunity to re-install Windows since an occasional re-install can make things work a lot better.

 

[mickeddie]

:lol:
I just did a clean install on my new hard drive 2 weeks ago.

 

[Doughbuy]

Then just plug in the hdd, install all the new drivers, and your good to go. The mobo cd would have a lot of the drivers you need, don't forget audio, cd, and whatever else is new.

 

[mickeddie]

I installed all of the newest drivers already on my current machine. Will I have to re-install any of them on a new machine? I would guess not.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but this will be my first build so I don't know what to expect.

 

[Mondoman]

Just to clarify things, since there is some misleading info in this thread:
1) The CD that comes with the MB is almost certainly NOT bootable, it just contains drivers and software.
2) The old hard drive with Windows on it will almost certainly NOT boot properly when installed in the new system. The reason is that Windows installed MB- and CPU- specific boot drivers on the old hard drive which are specific for the hardware it found in that system. Your new MB/CPU are almost certainly different (it IS an upgrade, right?).

One thing you can do is boot from the Windows CD, and choose to do a "Repair" Installation on the hard drive. This approach *should* achieve what you are trying to do, but doesn't always work 100%.

Best performance and compatibility is to "start fresh" by installing Win on an empty hard drive. You can then copy your data onto that drive, but will have to *reinstall* all your software from scratch, so it's a fair bit of work. On the plus side, you'll not be installing old unused files/drivers/programs that were cluttering up things, so the system should be faster and more stable.

 

[maury73]

The old HD will not boot or boot with tons of errors and cause also data corruption.

Always start installing XP from scratch when you change mobo+CPU+GPU.

 

[Mondoman]

I installed all of the newest drivers already on my current machine. Will I have to re-install any of them on a new machine?

Yes. Your new machine, which has different hardware from your old machine, uses a different set of "drivers." You need to essentially start from scratch on the new machine, either by doing the "repair" install of Win, or a fresh install of Win. Whichever install of Win you do, you need to then install *all* the appropriate drivers, starting with those for the MB, then the video card, and any others for other hardware you may have. If you are doing the "repair" install, you will need to remove all video drivers and utility programs (if the repair hasn't already done that) and reinstall them. The potential complexity of getting this all done (in the correct order, too) is one of the reasons that doing a fresh Win install on a blank drive is often recommended.

 

[mickeddie]

I installed all of the newest drivers already on my current machine. Will I have to re-install any of them on a new machine?

Yes. Your new machine, which has different hardware from your old machine, uses a different set of "drivers." You need to essentially start from scratch on the new machine, either by doing the "repair" install of Win, or a fresh install of Win. Whichever install of Win you do, you need to then install *all* the appropriate drivers, starting with those for the MB, then the video card, and any others for other hardware you may have. If you are doing the "repair" install, you will need to remove all video drivers and utility programs (if the repair hasn't already done that) and reinstall them. The potential complexity of getting this all done (in the correct order, too) is one of the reasons that doing a fresh Win install on a blank drive is often recommended.

<sigh> I just did all that. I guess I'll be using Windows SMART wizard again...

Hm...I have my 80gb HD as my backup drive in my current system. I can re-transfer my data BACK to that drive, do a clean install on my SATA drive, plug the IDE drive in the new machine, and SMART transfer it all back.

I guess I can try a repair install first on my SATA drive and see what happens...as long as everything is backed up to my IDE drive.

 

[mickeddie]

Just curious...if I am keeping some of the old hardware why would I have to delete those drivers and re-install them? What could happen if I just uninstalled these drivers: mobo, GPU (that will be new), and sound card?

Since I'm backing up my data I guess I can do whatever I want and see what happens...worst case senerio I have to to a clean install in the end anyway, right?