[RESOLVED] Swapping C-Drive to another PC

I have two PC's both with XP Pro/SP2 installed. The version of XP I have does not require a license nor does it require to be activated. The PC that I use most of the time and which has very important accounting applications went down and I suspect that I am going to have to get it repaired.

Now the other PC is just an extra PC I have for other things and it is still running.

Here is my question.

Can I remove the C-Drive from the PC that went down, remove the C-Drive from the good PC and put the C-Drive from the PC that went down into the good PC and start it up without any problems? The two PCs are different in brand name and hardware so will XP get all screwed up trying to start the OS on the other PC?

depends on the reason the system went down in the first place too...

and yes, it could be a problem because when windows starts up it's going to load drivers expecting the hardware of the old system... which may or may not be compatible with the hardware of the new system.

-tg

You could probably boot first into Safe mode (press F8 after BIOS screen) and then install the new PC's drivers there. Afterwards, you can uninstall the old PC's drivers if you don't need them anymore.

I decided not to use hard drive from downed PC to other PC. Instead I installed the C-Drive from the downed PC as a 2nd drive on the other PC and copy everything over. It works fine now.

there is one thing you need to do before a swap like that: uninstall any 3rd party drivers for the hard drives and reinstall generic ones that come with xp. If you do not do this crucial step your system will not boot even in safe mode unless they happen to have the same chipset for sata/ide controllers.