Moving XP from laptop to desktop

[LittleFloyd]

I've looked around on the forums and am confused about the way OEM Windows installs work.

Here is my situation. I have a retail XP upgrade disk I used on a laptop 4 years ago. That laptop is no longer in use. I am building a new desktop and would like to have XP on it. Is it possible to move take the hard drive out of the laptop and use it in the new desktop? If it is possible will I have a problem because the original xp installation on the laptop was from dell and most likely tied to the laptop however the XP Pro installation on it right now was done with an XP Pro retail disk. Is the install still tied to the Dell or does the XP retail upgrade make the install portable.

Ideally I'd like to move the 80 gb laptop drive with XP Pro installed to the Desktop, and just use it for the windows installation and then add a 500 gb hard drive for other software.

 

[number13]

I think there will be a few problem with that, as far as putting the 2.5" in your desktop, the desktop may not like the drive and will not boot from it, in the event that it does boot you might be able to get it to work,, but the XP disk is liscensed to the laptop it was on, good luck