Hard drive switching?

[faytleingod]

Hello all i have a small question.. the pc i currently have is running windows vista and my old pc is running windows xp.. if i was to take the HD out of the vista pc and replace it with the other Pc's HD would my vista PC have wndows xp then? (maybe confusing question but im desperate)

[Jiggy]

Hello faytleingod Welcome to PC Guide,

You would have a hard drive with WinXP on it containing drivers for the WinXP pc on the vista pc, and problems would follow.

A fresh install of the OS is the way to go.

[Paul Komski]

A fresh install of XP is best but not mandatory since a repair installation (http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm) will nearly always do the trick. In either case reactivation would be an issue. Make sure you have a Windows installation CD and all the necessary hardware drivers before you start.

If you intend to return the drive to the other PC later on you will have to go through the whole performance once again unless you have an image file that you can return to.

[jlreich]

Also, if you were to install XP with vista already installed it would cause vista to not be able to boot. You would then have to boot from the vista DVD and run the repair utility to fix it. Then you would end up with a boot menu allowing you to boot to the OS of your choice.

This is actually not very difficult to do and it would work fine, but can be intimidating to someone that has never done such things before. Also if you have an OEM computer that didn't come with an actual Vista install disc but rather a restore CD/DVD or prompting you to make a restore DVD, you can't do this.

The other option, and recommended, is to use third party partition/boot manager such as BootIt NG to handle the booting for you. But again this is something that would be intimidating to someone that has never done this before.

If you are really desperate to have XP on the new computer we can walk you through it. But make sure you back up your system and any important data before proceeding. Or if you need to make recovery DVD's of your new system, do so before trying this.

If you want to go this way post your system specs including type (IDE/PATA or SATA) and size of both the new hard drive and the old hard drive.

If you wanted to get rid of vista and just install XP it is pretty straight forward. But as the others have said a fresh install is the way to go. But make sure you can get XP chipset drivers for the new system before you proceed.

[faytleingod]

Thanks for all the nice replies.. i guess in the end run i still have to buy the windows XP disc? and Jl thanks for the offer maybe ill take you up on it, but since i am kind of a pc "amateur" it will be intimidating, so by backing up files you mean..?

[Paul Komski]

if i was to take the HD out of the vista pc
What were your intentions with that HDD?

[Jiggy]

Paul - I forgot about a repair installation, its been a while since I last used it.

[faytleingod]

Well maybe might cause quite the laughter but FFXI (final fantasy XI) does not work with windows vista it only works with windows xp etc

[Paul Komski]

it only works with windows xp etc

So much for the backward compatibility ethos.
So much for those rushing to upgrade a MS product.

[jlreich]

Seems they are working on fixing the incompatibilities with vista. See here (http://www.playonline.com/homeus/headline/news01.html) for more info.

So hopefully you will be up and running before too long.