5punk

i have a new shiney pc! and i still have the old knackered one. now my question is, is it possible to insert the old harddrive in the new computer, and copy all my stuff over, but still have it working? i have lots of games installed, and i dont wanna go through the whole rigmarole of reinstalling stuff just to get the registry stuff sorted.

the old pc is on winXP pro gold disk edition, with SP1

the new pc is on winXP pro real, legit edition, with SP2

any thoughts peeps?

you can, but it's not a good idea. Having a fresh WindowsXP install is a good thing. My advice is to bite the bullet and reinstall everything. You can copy all your data across no problem, but you're better off in the long run re-installing your programs and games.

If you want to move the old drive with WinXP installation over to the new PC, you're going to need to do some work. You have to basically uninstall all of the drivers and then move it to the new PC. This is a major PAIN IN THE ASS. On top of that, your new PC will be saddled with all the bloat from all the porn spyware, botched uninstalls, and general shittyness of running a WinXP installation for a while.

deject wrote:you can, but it's not a good idea. Having a fresh WindowsXP install is a good thing. My advice is to bite the bullet and reinstall everything. You can copy all your data across no problem, but you're better off in the long run re-installing your programs and games.

If you want to move the old drive with WinXP installation over to the new PC, you're going to need to do some work. You have to basically uninstall all of the drivers and then move it to the new PC. This is a major PAIN IN THE ASS. On top of that, your new PC will be saddled with all the bloat from all the porn spyware, botched uninstalls, and general shittyness of running a WinXP installation for a while.

bugger. oh well, thanks for that mate. guess i'll just have to reinstall eve. and
act of war. and dawn of war/winter assault. and cod:uo. and black and white 2. and....etc. well this is gonna be a fun night.

deject has covered most of it, you definately don't want to run the OS from one PC on another and most applications/games wont be very happy if their registry stuff isn't copied over with all the data files, which is obviously a very hard job and not worth the bother. You should put it in and connect it up though so you can access you're old save files and stuff and copy them over if need be. You're bound to remember something you want from your old harddrive

id say norton ghost, as that can copy the whole contents of a drive accross in about 30mins id expect.
The problem with that is if you have new hardware, drivers wont be happy.
Most can be sorted out when its booted, but with windows xp, you cant change the chipset drivers as it will bluescreen on bootup.

Slim chance i know, but does your new system have the same chipset as your old one?
Otherwise, yeah reinstall everything

you could always save all the game save files and stuff like that though, that way if they do bork up its not like you have wasted alot of time on it

I agree 100% with deject, you don't want all that old clobber hanging around.

Using the old setup uninstall games that have saves, opting to leave the saves intact, then there's not much to copy over. If it's still too much to transfer, you can mount the old disk as a second drive inside the new system, but I'd recommend immediately moving everything to the new drive (into an "old PC" subfolder) and removing the old drive, as it's presence is likely a bottleneck in the new system.

Edit: Just install stuff as and when you actually need it. I'm usually surprised how many of the old programs I don't actually require.

To save you some trouble, you could just network the 2 pcs to copy over whatever you need. All you'd need for that is a crossover network cable i think.

im suprised at the amount of things on my pc that i dont actualy know what they are or do. i realy need a clean out

when you ahve installed everything you need and its all correct and running fine, you could create a drive image which would save time if you reinstalled xp, and is also a good backup. this is the 1 thing i regret not doing last time i reinstalled, so ive gotta w8 till next time.

5punk

Computer lifeboat?

Computer lifeboat?