Hard Drive Swap Blue screen of death

DCMega1

Greeting all. I'll try to keep this short and make sense. Help would be greatly appreciated.

I purchased a new basebones computer (case, power supply, motherboard, processor, heatsink/fan). My plan was to re-use the rest of my parts, which is easy assuming you want to wipe out your hard drive and install fresh. I wanted to just pull my hard drive from the old comp and plug it into the new one. I was told that since I have Windows XP, this process is easy. The instructions I was given are:
1) power down and unplug the comp
2) remove the hard drive from the old computer
3) install driver in new computer, and boot up using the Windows XP CD
4) hit enter on first screen, F8 on second screen to accept license, and then select "R" for repair Windows installation on the third screen.

I was informed that following these steps would simply update the information on the Windows OS, and all of my existing programs/settings/etc would all be intact. I followed the steps, and Windows went through a long install/update process, and then rebooted. Upon reboot... blue screen of death. It says something to the effect of failure to boot operating system, if you installed new drive, remove and try again. I don't have the exact message on hand. Any ideas??? Did I screw it completely up? I want to avoid wiping the drive if possible. Help appreciated... as I am now working on a derelict comp until the new one is up.

Dexter

Unless your new motherboard is identical to the old one, you are going to have all kinds of driver conflicts. On boot up, all your hardware drivers are loaded. If your motherboard, like many these days, has onboard sound, USB, ethernet, maybe video, RAID, SATA, etc, then each of these hardware components requires specifc drivers. The new motherboard likely has very different hardware components (ethernet controller from a different manufacturer, audio hardware from a different manufacturer, etc.)

In some cases where the hardware is close, Windows can hobble through it and boot up, with many of the devices just being disabled. In many cases however, it cannot.

This is most especially true if the main chipset on the two motherboards are different. If you are going from an Intel chipset MB to a VIA chipset MB, your chances of starting up are slim-to-none.

What are the models of motherboards you are using here?

Best thing to do is to get a new hard drive, install the new system fresh on the new OS, install your programs again, then install the old hard drive as a D drive, and transfer over personal data, etc.

Dexter...

DCMega1

The old mobo was a PCchips one... 810LMR or something along those lines. Really low end, budget board. Though the new one is still budget, it's a little better option/ability-wise. It's a Biostar M7NCD Ultra Socket A. Obviously the two boards have numerous differences. I was told the swapping would be easy, but from Dexter's post it sounds like I was mis-informed.
Looks like I have to go with the option of installing to a different hard drive, plugging this one in as a slave, and pulling off the stuff I didn't backup already. Blah. I just wanted to avoid having to re-install all my software, games, etc. So much for the easy way out.

I'm curious though... has anyone ever tried just swapping out a hard drive to a completely new mobo/cpu without problems? The advice I was given was from folks who claimed to do it all the time.

Shorty

Not that I know of. I've tried between different boards with the same chipset and that just about worked.. (once it had addressed all the different IRQ's) but a different chipset requires a totally different HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to be loaded by Windows.

I've rebuilt many a machine in my job (IT support/manager). Never had a succesful transplant yet.

Reinstall time unless it's XP or 2K. Then a repair installation would repair the Windows files & build a new HAL

muddocktor

I've tried this before with both XP and Win2K and never had much luck, even with repair installs when going from one chipset to another unless it was a very similar chipset design like from KT266A to KT333 or BX to i815. If a repair install doesn't work (which I've had fail a few times) and you need to be able to get some information off the drive still or there's programs installed you can't afford to lose, then try an overlay install of your OS over the old install, having the new install overwrite the old one. After doing this, you will still have to rerun your various program disks for them to register the programs that are already still on your hard drive into the registry, but you won't lose any data or anything else that way on your hard drive.

I've found Win2K and WinXP to be much less forgiving on a mobo swapout than the old Win98, which would generally make the transition pretty well. It's about the onlything I miss about Win98 though.

DCMega1

Thanks for all the advice folks. I finally gave in, slaved the drive to an old comp, pulled off stuff I hadn't backed-up allready, and just went with a fresh install on the new comp. Worked great. Now I just have to figure out how to get this BIOS set up for speed and stability. Thanks again!

Tex

muddocktor wrote:

I've tried this before with both XP and Win2K and never had much luck, even with repair installs when going from one chipset to another unless it was a very similar chipset design like from KT266A to KT333 or BX to i815. If a repair install doesn't work (which I've had fail a few times) and you need to be able to get some information off the drive still or there's programs installed you can't afford to lose, then try an overlay install of your OS over the old install, having the new install overwrite the old one. After doing this, you will still have to rerun your various program disks for them to register the programs that are already still on your hard drive into the registry, but you won't lose any data or anything else that way on your hard drive.

I've found Win2K and WinXP to be much less forgiving on a mobo swapout than the old Win98, which would generally make the transition pretty well. It's about the onlything I miss about Win98 though.

Bizarre as build tons of boxs and never had one fail ever. I have had tons of even fresh installs that I had to disable some of the devices until Windows got up though and re-enable them one at a time to get everything perfect like I want it? My poor wifes computer has gone through 8 or 10 MB's in the last 4 years from old abit kt7's to kr7's to ecs k7s5a's vta3's to amd MP/MPX dualies on asus and msi MB's to a dual opteron and she now has a single opteron. So its went from old via, newer via chipsets to two differant SIS chipsets, another via chipset two differant older amd dualie chipsets to a dual amd chipset opteron to a nforce opteron with no problems?

Tex