new comp but old hard drive??

[mybulleturface]

im getting everything new in my comp but a os and hard drive and i have a hard drive with a recovery drive and no os cd didnt come with 1. i was wondering if i can use the same hard drive with the same os?

[Aedus]

Just plug your hard drive into your new PC and itll be fine

[Vreki]

Yes, initially it should run ok, I have kept my installation through several changes.

But since you are getting everything new, you might as well get a real OS disk instead of the recovery disk.
They are "The Evil", installs lots of crap on your system and might even refuse to work if it is used on anything but the original computer.
I usually say that Vista is evil, but recovery disks are worse.

[looqas]

Most of the time changing parts under your OS is fine. Just yesterday it did not work with my little brother. The OS leaves all the mobo + processor specific drivers there and the problem was/is that it tries to load some RAID driver and use it under the new mobo + proc leading to instant crash. We had to switch the old hardware setup back in order to make it to windows to uninstall all the mobo drivers there were. And even then the RAID driver was not uninstalled! And he's in a same situation as you having no OS disc, so he has to go along with the old system for now.

So 90% of the time it's ok to change the hardware but there is always this risk. And OS works so much better if you do a clean install.

Just get the OS since you get it OEM price with your parts.

[mybulleturface]

so should i just plug in my harddrive and pray??

[looqas]

yes. You can change the old parts back to have a working comp again, but then it's clearly time to get Vista.

[mybulleturface]

have any of u guys done this b4?

[dOwnsizer]

yes, I've swapped HDD's many times... However, because it's a whole new system w/old HDD, I can't honestly say it will work perfectly w/o any problems...

at the very least you'll probably need to phone MS to re-authorize windows... have your SN handy (typically a sticker on your box/manual somewhere) I'm not the expert on this, as I haven't built Windows PC's since win95 but you shouldn't A: blow anything up, B: lose data on the old HDD if the swap doesn't work (obviously if you start installing drivers for new system onto old drive you can screw it up.)

[looqas]

have any of u guys done this b4?

4-5 times. Everytime has worked. First time when it did not work was with my brother.

It's better to wipe the slate clean but you can do this if you want to.

Just be sure to uninstall all specific programs from Add & Remove programs (like AMD dual core optimizer for example) and mobo drivers from Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager (like specific network adapter drivers, IEEE 1394 (firewire) drivers, RAID drivers ). Just click the device and uninstall button in the upper bar.

You could leave these installed but especially RAID drivers can cause problems, so it's better to uninstall these and then shut the comp and change the parts before booting again to Windows. If you just boot without new part the Windows will find all these removed devices again and install drivers for them.

[mybulleturface]

4-5 times. Everytime has worked. First time when it did not work was with my brother.

It's better to wipe the slate clean but you can do this if you want to.

Just be sure to uninstall all specific programs from Add & Remove programs (like AMD dual core optimizer for example) and mobo drivers from Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager (like specific network adapter drivers, IEEE 1394 (firewire) drivers, RAID drivers ). Just click the device and uninstall button in the upper bar.

You could leave these installed but especially RAID drivers can cause problems, so it's better to uninstall these and then shut the comp and change the parts before booting again to Windows. If you just boot without new part the Windows will find all these removed devices again and install drivers for them.

alright thanks ill just format my hard drive and make sure all that junk is gone then swap the parts.

[Vreki]

at the very least you'll probably need to phone MS to re-authorize windows... have your SN handy (typically a sticker on your box/manual somewhere) I'm not the expert on this, as I haven't built Windows PC's since win95 but you shouldn't A: blow anything up, B: lose data on the old HDD if the swap doesn't work (obviously if you start installing drivers for new system onto old drive you can screw it up.)

XP allows you to register on the internet, I think you have a 3 day period before it stops working.
A mistake I personally made was not setting the time correctly on a new motherboard before installing windows. When I adjusted it before activating windows, it assumed that the 3 day period had expired :wall:

[superj1337]

XP allows you to register on the internet, I think you have a 3 day period before it stops working.
A mistake I personally made was not setting the time correctly on a new motherboard before installing windows. When I adjusted it before activating windows, it assumed that the 3 day period had expired :wall:

30 days not 3 days


my windows has a glitch where it says "you can not use windows until you activate it ... activate now?" i press yes and a menu comes up saying "windows has already been activated" so now i have to reformat:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry::cry: :cry:

BTW : if your wondering how im posting this without windows...im use my ubuntu(linux) hard drive