fl wrote:
> Hi,
> I have an old PC with an Windows XP OS, Pentium IV. I would like to
> assemble a new mother board, new Intel i5 CPU PC. I would like to know
> the old hard disk can be a primary disk without problem? I am not sure
> about this because there are many differences between the old system
> hardware the new PC. I would like to get it clear before I buy new
> parts. Thanks.
>
As a non-IT guy, I don't have experience with doing this
sort of things 100's of times, so take the following with a
grain of salt. So this will just give you some of the flavor
of the thing.
WinXP comes in different versions in terms of licensing.
There is "retail" (relatively expensive), "unbranded OEM" (about
half price, but tied to one computer as defined by the motherboard),
and "branded OEM" (version with Dell/HP/Gateway/Acer etc). The
rules will be different for each one. There are other versions,
so by no means is my little list exhaustive (VLK used by businesses is another).
You're unlikely to have a retail OS, because you hardly ever run into someone
on the Internet who has one. It's the least restrictive one to own
from a licensing perspective, but with a price to match.
You can get some idea of the complexity, by browsing this article.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html
How activation works, is described here.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm
I managed to move WinXP from one computer to another. I have
two LGA775 motherboards. I kept the same CPU, memory, hard drive,
peripherals, and just changed the motherboard to start. I was
able to activate over the Internet, without phoning Microsoft.
My OS in that case, was an unbranded OEM, which should only
be used with the one motherboard. Later, I changed the CPU,
the RAM, but perhaps even the drives (I've kinda lost track),
and my OS is still running. The OS is only used on the one
computer, the one I'm typing on. The old components, including
the old motherboard, are in a backup computer (it runs a variety
of OSes, such as Gentoo).
The reason for the motherboard swap, happened when the BIOS on the motherboard
did some strange things to the chipset settings, when a TV tuner card
was added to the computer. Performance went to hell after that,
and I changed motherboards because there was no chance of the
BIOS ever getting fixed. What would happen, is disk transfer performance
would drop to 10-20MB/sec instead of more normal values, and it
got worse the longer the computer was running.
So I have managed to move WinXP, and strictly speaking, the
rules for OEM systems, should have prevented the move, or at
least caused me to need to phone Microsoft for manual activation.
(There, I would have to explain how "my motherboard broke, and this
new one is a repair".)
Your case will be different, in that you're going to change more
components. Maybe the only component which is the same, is the
hard drive.
As the above article states, it's best to keep a backup copy of
the disk. I don't think when I did my transition, I did a
repair install. I think I changed the hard drive driver to
the default Microsoft IDE one, so I wouldn't get an "inaccessible
boot volume" for my troubles. So you should take some care, to try
to use a driver for the boot drive, which will work with either
motherboard, and that's half the battle.
When I did my transition, the system booted, and then discovered
a large number of new pieces of hardware, all yammering for drivers.
Initially, I even had trouble getting the mouse to work, until about
two minutes after I booted, the system installed a USB HID driver and
the mouse started to work. But you don't always get that lucky. I've
heard of cases where the OS more or less just locks up, and I presume
that's an activation issue of some sort. You can try a Repair Install
(as the Michael Stevens site promotes as a solution), but that implies
you have a retail or an unbranded OEM installation disk to use for
the Repair Install. If you're moving a Dell disk onto new hardware, well,
that won't go so well at all. The Dell OS will control activation by SLIC,
a table possessed by the BIOS, and a non-Dell motherboard simply won't
make the OS very happy. That's why they invented SLIC, so stolen copies
of Dell OSes couldn't be reused.
As a home user, one piece of advice I can share with you, is the
need to keep both systems running at the same time. I've done
transitions before, where I gutted the old computer case, then
filled it with the new hardware, only to discover I forget some
disk preparation step, and had to put all the old hardware back
in the computer case. That sucks. If you're not on too tight a
budget, try to have enough hardware present, so if you need to boot
the original disk image again for some reason (like fixing the driver
used for the storage interface), you can do it. Even if it means
building up the new hardware just sitting it on the kitchen table. I've
done that before, placing a telephone book under the motherboard, and
just strewing cables on the table (be careful not to bump the video card).
I've had a complete system booted, all sitting loose on the kitchen table.
That way, if I needed to go back to the old system, its hardware was
still in the computer case. Once the OS was moved over, and the new
hardware was proved working, I could gut the old computer case,
and move in the new hardware.
What I can't tell you, is if there are any consequences for the
license key, if the transition fails. For example, if the new OS can't
be activated, you boot the old computer and go to Windows Update, can
you still get updates ? Or will the license key be blacklisted ? I
don't know the answer to that. I haven't done enough of these,
to run into trouble (yet).
Paul
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