Need help booting a new system from an old hard drive

Iason · #1 10-20-2003, 11:35 AM

Hi,
My Uncle's motherboard has given up the ghost and I am going to install a new motherboard and processor for him, but we'll be keeping the old hard drive. The worry I have is will I be able to boot up the new motherboard with the version of xp on the old hard drive, or will this cause problems (e.g. wrong motherboard driver etc). His old pc came with one of the accursed recovery disks and no standalone copy of xp so reformatting and reinstalling xp is not an option. Forking out the £180 for a new copy also seems a rip off when he has already paied for a licence once already when buying his old pc. He is also very worried as after talking to an independant pc repair man he was told that unless he replaced the old m/b with one exactly the same he would loose all data on his hard drive, and was then quoted an extortionate price for a replacment board even thought it's over 2 years old.
Many thanks for any help

Iason · #2 10-20-2003, 11:36 AM

Just to add that the system specs at the bottom of the post relate to my system not my uncles
cheers

Admiral Michael · #3 10-21-2003, 11:14 AM

You could acquire a non-cracked burned copy of the Windows XP CD. Install from that and use the original CDKEY that came with the computer.

Iason · #4 10-22-2003, 07:21 AM

Thanks for the reply,
Yeah I could easily get another copy of xp but I never thought of using the same key, I'll give it a try.
Cheers