Transferring HD from Intel machine to MSI/AMD

Probly need to do a re install of windows on the new machine. i have found that PC's arent like macs in regards of booting off another machine's HD.

they don't want you cloning hard drives, sticking it in your friends machine, after it has been activated. Just another way It thwarts people from getting around activation

There are ways to get WinXP to recognize the new hardware. You'll likely need a WinXP CD to get it done, but at least you'd likely not have to do a full reinstall. There are sites with the procedure that gets XP to at least boot. Then comes more trouble...

There is also the problem for the Windows piracy issue, as Coius mentioned. WinXP stores a numerical "score" tied to the hardware in a machine. Each time certain pieces of hardware changes, it docks one or a few points from that score. Once the score hits a certain point it flags your install, and tells MS. Just another stupid reason to make you call up MS and get the to revalidate your code. They'll want to know that you don't have that copy on the old machine any more (ie, you transfered the HD) and if they like you that day you'll get a new code.

Boy, Apple really had it right on when they came out with that "1984" commercial. How does MS still rule most of the world?

Ubiquity, shady business practices, monopolistic behavior. Take your pick. I use it because I have to (programmer), but am slowly going to OS X/Linux for home use. If it weren't for all of those games I would have done it long ago.

As far as putting it on different hardware, when I do something like that it's for a customer repair. Normally I have to do a clean install anyway, but on those occasions where I don't a repair will work too. For the most part if it shares a similar chipset and processor to the original, it will activate over the internet. If not, it can be done over the phone.

The last one I did was an HP Pavilion from TigerDirect's clearance table. The motherboard was bad, so I got a VIA-based board. Since it hadn't been set up yet, it would not let me activate it over the internet or the phone. I ended up installing Windows 2000.

I pick all three......

Another reason why Windoze sucks !

I have never been able to successfully swap a PC drive from one to another without reformatting and doing a fresh install. Makes you appreciate the Mac OS so much more.

And there are some XP Pro CD's that do not need activation to work long term. I was told they were designed for students to practice installations and works on multiple machines. I know a guy who's second cousin's brother-in-law's step-brother knows a guy who says it works just like the real thing ;-)

Both of those are rather finicky about transferring a hard drive from one computer to another. Usually a repair install will allow it to load and still have the programs that were there before on the computer afterwards.

The Corporate installs do not require activation. The Media Center ones are rather deceiving. When on the text mode part of the installation, it says XP Professional. When the install is done, you don't have the features of the Professional install. You can't join a domain for example.

Linux is also finicky about different hardware too, at least for me. If I have to change hardware, I'll backup, wipe and reinstall. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I only have some experience with the command line.

DOS however has no problem!

You're doing something wrong, clearly. For years every time I've gotten a new Linux workstation my method for "installing" linux has been to boot a CD or network miniroot, format the new hard disk, and use "tar" to copy the complete contents of an older workstation over. Then you just chroot to the new install, install a boot sector, and you're good to go. "Installing" an OS is *so* Old School. Only reason to do it is if you're sick of the old one, either because of a bad case of /usr/local/cruftitis or a yen to try a different distribution. ;^)

I really can't imagine why you'd wipe and reinstall when upgrading or moving hard disks, either. Halfway modern (and even fairly elderly) Linux distributions and kernels are *really* good at hardware detection. Generally the only thing that is a real hassle is X11 configuration. (Reconfiguring X is a distribution-dependent task, and some are better at it then others. Ubuntu, for all its good points, has *very* poor documentation for what to do when swapping video cards. RPM distributions with kudzu or yast usually manage to detect you swapped the card when they boot up and act appropriately.)

If you're moving a hard disk with an boot loader which uses hardcoded device names rather then symbolic addressing I suppose you might have some fixing to do if you move to a motherboard who's controller causes your HD to show up at a different address, but most dists don't do that anymore. (Only time I've had that problem at all recently was with FreeBSD, not Linux.)

--Peace

Yep, boot loaders (and by extension drive device names/locations) and video configs are the main gotchas when moving a drive in a Linux machine. One easy way to avoid the video problem is to set it to VESA before the swap and once it's done configure it for the new video hardware. At least with that you'll get some sort of GUI up, instead of a bunch of screenfulls of X errors.

If you can still boot the XP install on the Intel Mobo, you might want to try sysprep http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577

I have used it to move XP installs from one computer to another (Corporate XP Pro.)