Reload OS after replacing crashed motherboard

[Vishal_Trivedi]

Hello Everyone,

First of all, my apologies for reporting this issue, which has already been reported before. The reason I am doing so is because after many searches, I have not been able to find the solution to my unique problem.

I am running Windows XP SP2 on my pc which had a GigaByte motherboard / P4 / 512 MB RAM. Recently the motherboard crashed and I've sent it for replacement. Meanwhile, I've got another motherboard / system to which I wish to attach my hard drive and load my OS. I need to do this as I need to retrieve several settings and files which are dependent on the OS. Once I'm done with that, I'll format the hard drive and re-install the OS.

I got a system of a friend of mine, and I tried to boot via my hard drive but as soon as the Windows XP logo appears, the system reboots instantly, and the cycle follows. Same is the case with 'Safe Mode'.

I've heard that what I want can be accomplished via using the XP recovery console.

Any help / suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Many Thanks!

-Vishal

[onespeedreed]

If you want Xp to recognize new hardware (motherboard, cpu), you will have to do a repair install.

You cannot expect to match up strange operating systems and hardware and have it work.

If you need to obtain data from your hard drive the best thing to do is too access it from the borrowed system-- meaning -- hooking up your original hard drive as 'slave'.

If you have data that is password protected (by xp or another program), you will not recover it by hooking it up to another system and operating system. In this situation, a repair install is your best hope as this type of install should keep your data intact but there are no quarantees.

[SKULLZ1987]

This is a main issue between Win 98 and With XP. Where as with 98 you could change everything in the case and keep the OS. With XP, Microsoft has integrated a form Copyright Protection. This means you cannot just remove the hard drive from one pc and put it in a completely new pc because all the hardware is different. To keep all your personal data, you would have to do a repair of XP. If you do this it may affect some of your programs and you might have to reinstall a few of them but this is unavoidable

Note: If you had the same motherboard as your replacment this wouldn't of been a problem. you would of just swapped it out and it would of been working as normal.