Transfering Xp to another laptop

[rfisher]

My laptop is physically falling to bits so I want to take the hard disk with Xp and all my files on it and put it into another laptop which I own.

I think that Xp won't work if you do this because it knows that you have swapped machines and Microsoft think that's naughty.

I can't load Xp on the other laptop and transfer my files because the hard disk in it is smaller than mine.

Is there a simple fix for this?

Ta.

[ThePassenger]

Simple & Expensive: Buy an external disk pack.

Simple & not quite as expensive: But a new laptop drive from ebay (2.5" SATA or 2.5" IDE) that is big enough.

Complex & cheap: Fire up your laptop and go in to the hardware manager. Delete everything it mentions like a crazed junkie looking down the barrel of a drugs bust. Shut the machine down. Pull the drive, slap it in the new laptop (having swapped over the necessary acutriments). Power on. F8 and select Safe Mode. Hopefully windows will fire up (not picking a fight with the disk controller and crashing is a good sign here) and be sat at the desktop. Reboot, let it boot normally and it should start asking for drivers.
Yes it will need to go speak to Microsoft to reauthenticate, you might need to speak to MS.

[rfisher]

Thanks for the reply.

I have external USB disks which I use as backup drives by ghosting my laptop drive onto them. Can I use these and how?

Second question is - have you ever tried the deleting all device driver info approach and did it work? Sounds like fun!

Third question - the laptop I'm transfering to is the same make and model as the original so same cpu, bus, chips etc. How will Xp know it's different? Does it note chip serial numbers?

Ta.

[ThePassenger]

rfisher said:

Thanks for the reply.

I have external USB disks which I use as backup drives by ghosting my laptop drive onto them. Can I use these and how?

Bolt it on and just dump the files to one. On the new system... bolt the drive to the laptop and away you go.

rfisher said:

Second question is - have you ever tried the deleting all device driver info approach and did it work? Sounds like fun!

Hit n' miss in my experience. I've tried it and it works... sometimes it doesn't and Windows gets all upperty. A repair install of XP can often solve this and get it to the stage of asking for drivers. Saying that I've had it work more often than not.

rfisher said:

Third question - the laptop I'm transfering to is the same make and model as the original so same cpu, bus, chips etc. How will Xp know it's different? Does it note chip serial numbers?

Ahh. If they're the same make/model then you might be exceptionally lucky. Drop the old HDD in to the new machine and Windows should (hopefully) be oblivious to the change or at least not notice enough to require revalidation. Should side step the drivers issue as well.

[BliarOut]

Ghost it, shrink the partition as you go and reactivate it, that should be all that's required. You won't need to worry about drivers if the hardware is the same.