moving an xp drive to new system

I'm new to this so please bear with me.

I have a running xp pro system and I want to move the hardrive to a new box and motherboard. It is a registerded copy of xp but I'm not sure just moving the drive will work. A computer store says to move the drive to the new box, boot off the original cd and follow the second repair chance on the bootup. They feel that this will keep the original registration intact and I can then run the new motherboard setup cd on the new box.

This computer is my work unit and it's info in very valuable. I will do the proper back ups and such, I just want to make the migration a simple as possible.

I will be open to any suggestions as to the proceedure to accomplish this feat.

( my second thought was to mount a new hardrive and then copy over the needed data from the original drive but what do i do about my xp software. the old box will not be needed, so I do not need two operating software packages.)

Sincerely - Bigugh

 

Thanks

thanks for you help. I did go to the sites and i will unistall and reinstall. This has been a good experience.