big mess .. little mess ?

[anitelite]

Hi kids,

Well....all of my windows software expertise flew out the window this weekend. Wife decided she wants better speed for computer so not to let a good FSX upgrade opportunity go to waste I jumped in with both feet. Idea was to put system in my computer into her case (her's is a smaller footprint, semi portable case) reattach her drive and voila...instant upgrade for her. Put in new motherboard and cpu in my case, reattach drive and move forward. Both machines are running separate copies of XP home. What a disaster. Neither drive would actually load windows... hers or mine. After fiddling with it all weekend long, I put her machine back the way it was, attached a newly formated drive to my upgraded hardware, installed xp and called it done for the weekend. So....my goal for her machine at least, is to NOT reformat her drive since all her programs, files, and bookmarks, etc I would very much like to leave alone. If there's no other choice, I'll format and start again, but I'd welcome other ideas.

Thanks !

[JSkorna]

It all starts in the BIOS of the computer.

The drive must be recognized in the BIOS.

Then the drive must be marked as the boot drive in the BIOS.

Then the drive should be the first boot device.

Then it should boot.

[anitelite]

Hi Jim!

Thanks for the quick reply. I think I've misled you on how the computers react to the changes made. Each drive tries to start windows and the windows screens initially look normal. After 30 seconds or so, however, the black and white screen comes up asking if you want to start in safe mode or start normally. I can start in safe mode and delete/disable drivers in an attempt to start normally, but it always reverts back to this black and white start screen regardless of what I do. I did a google search asking the same question and some have suggested booting with the windows cd and doing a repair of the existing operating system. I don't mind doing that if it will leave the programs and files alone. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks

[JSkorna]

The repair will leave things alone.

What happens if you chose the "start normally" screen?

[edgehead]

Windows XP is not allowing you to change system specs like motherboard, processor, graphics card all at once. Its an anti-piracy protection. This way you cant install same windows on many machines in your house. I have done this mistake before. I guess you can call microsoft CSR so they can unlock it or send you new key.

[loki]

Windows XP is not allowing you to change system specs like motherboard, processor, graphics card all at once. Its an anti-piracy protection. This way you cant install same windows on many machines in your house. I have done this mistake before. I guess you can call microsoft CSR so they can unlock it or send you new key.

It's not an anti-piracy problem either. The problem is that each install of Windows has the drivers for the specific motherboard and chipset iris installed on. When you move the hard drive to a new machine, it won't have the necessary drivers. To fix this you can try a repair install which usually works. Otherwise you will need to do a clean install.

[anitelite]

excellent....i think i've got a couple of older drives that i can try as "guinea pigs" just to test. If those go ok, they I'll go for the other two in question.

Thanks everyone!

[anitelite]

well....i tried the repair on my original fsx drive that wouldnt load and got nowhere. that just made the machine constantly load, then shut off and repeat the cycle ad nauseum. I'd get the xp logo screen and then it would reboot. So, I've set that drive aside and will try a different one tonight and see how that goes.

[abrussell]

Have you tried Jim's advice in post #2? Swapping drives won't help unless the bios is configured to boot from that drive.
Bruce

[anitelite]

Thanks, Bruce

I did check in the bios that it was starting with the correct drive and there was no change. However, I did successfully do a repair installation on a different drive and that worked ok. Left all the programs and data intact. I did have to activate by phone immediately, however, as after the repair installation, windows refused to go any further without immediate activation which i found annoying to say the least, but the actual activation via phone was fairly straightforward. After that, I could update all the motherboard drivers and utilities. My MS Security Essentials still claims I don't have an authentic copy installed even after going to the MS site for the check (reports as authentic on MS website) so I'm not sure what to do about the MSE program unless I just need to uninstall it and reinstall again. But I was pleased that the repair installation went as smoothly as it did. I've got the wife's drive backed completely up on two different media now, so I'll tackle the REAL changeover tonight. Fingers crossed!

Thanks again for all the great suggestions.