Changing a Hard Drive from my computer to my Son's.

Hello All,
Good to talk to you all again.
My question is, I run XP on my computer, which is installed on 'D' drive.
My son has a computer which has ME installed on 'C'drive.
I intend to travel to Australia at the end of this month for about a six month stay and we need to take one of the PC's with us.
What I would like to know is, is it possible for me to take the 'D' drive out of my computer and install it in my son's computer and will it work o'k', or do I have to upgrade my son's computer to XP
for it to work properly. It won't be in there for long, as I intend buying a new PC as soon as I get there.
My son,s computer is only used for Games and his school work.
Thank yoy for your replies.
Phetjiu.

 

You can do it but there are a few fix-up things you'll have to do and I'm not positive about specifics on some of them.

Basic problem is that while you have XP loaded on your D: drive, some essential startup files are almost certainly on C: and without them, XP can't start.

There are a couple of Recovery Console utilities that will fix things up if you can use your XP CD and boot to it. But I'm hazy enough on hardware things to not be sure what happens if you take a 2nd drive from one PC and make it the only drive in another. The PC may re-label that drive as C:. In that case, the fixboot command should do the trick for you. Problem is, until you get things fixed the PC won't boot for you to see what drive letter you have.

Probably one of the other folks on here who mess with hardware can say for sure though.

Since I assume you intend to drop Son's ME drive in your PC so he can work with it, you'll also need to check the jumper settings. If the C: drive in your PC and the one you take from his are both set as Master, the PC will not be a happy camper.

 

If your XP drive is formatted using NTFS instead of FAT32 I don't think it will be readable while running WindowsME, if that is the intention.

 

Hi Newt and Rick,
Thanks for your replies.
How about I go at it a different way.
What if I take the D drive out of my son's computer and replace it with the D drive, which has XP Pro on it, from my computer, then I delete the ME os on the C drive of my son's computer, would I beable to just use his computer as normal, booting up from the XP on D drive.
If you think that is feasable, can you give me the run down on what would be the best way to delete the ME from his C drive, it
was installed by the manfacturer.
Look forward to your reply.
Thanks.
Phetjiu.

 

phetjiu,
As Newt says you are going to have a lot of problems! I gather from your post that the hardware, specifically the motherboards are different. This is a big problem. Not unsurmountable but close to it. I suggest you choose a PC and bite the bullet and backup important data or move that data to the other PC and take the said PC to OZ. 'else you could buy a new HD which are cheap if you don't go for hundreds of megabytes. Remove the existing HD. Install the new one, partition, format and install a fresh copy of windows (preferably XP). Problem is, to use the old HD you will need to keep that PC in a similar hardware configuration (not to many upgrades) for your return, and swap out the HD's again. Plenty of options, none of them ideal.
As said, suggest you save inportant data/documents and leave the configuration as is.

 

Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply.
Foreseeing the problems that changing the hard dive'sover are going to cause, how about I just remove the D drive from my computer, which is the drive that I have XP, installed on and take it with me to OZ and just re-install it in the computer I have over there, which as yet has no OS installed on it,
I would possibly have to re-boot it with myXP disc would I?
Regrds,
Phetjiu.

 

If, as is probable, you do not have boot.ini, ntldr, etc. on the drive with XP, you will need to do a repair of sorts to make it work after the drive is put in your OZ machine. Simple enough but essential. Take a look at This thread for Recovery Console instructions and the command that should fix you right up.

 

If you install the drive in a new PC, it would be worth just before removing the drive from your current system, to go into the device manager and uninstall most of the devices which are stored in software on the HD. This way when installing in a different system, XP will redetect the missing devices. XP is fairly good, unlike earlier versions, as it will (sometimes) detect the changes without first uninstalling the old devices, but this way it "helps" the process somewhat.