Moving HD to another PC without format?

[WazMeister]

Hi all

Can I basicly take a HD that has Win XP installed, SIMS 2, Everquest 2 etc just a normal HD install etc with my wifes stuff.
And place it in another machine with diffrent hardware and not have to format the HD?
I don't want to format it as A)I not got time atm and b) too much to backup.

But I want it to run ok and able to use and play the games still.

Can I just uninstalled the nividia GFX card drivers before taking it out, and the via 4in1 drivers and then put in other machine and install the ATI gfx drivers and nividia nforce drivers.

Would that work?

Any suggestions are apprechiated.

Thanks

Regards

Waz

[huxley]

I did a motherboard swap for a friend whos original board gave up the ghost after a psu killed it. The motherboard he got as a replacement was a slight upgrade but pretty much the same chip set.
Two problems we had were the board drivers didnt match so we had to remove and replace those. Second problem was windows kicked up the activation window so we had to phone ms and explain the board swap which they didnt like, but got around as I told them it was the same model.

Hope that helps

[Matt]

If you ever change mobos, do a full restore. No arguments, no shortcuts, just do it, you'll save a lot of potential fukc ups.

Yes games will have to reinstalled, but changing mobos you'll be lucky to get the games working properly without doing Windows again. It's not just as simple as mobo drivers, Windows itself seems very sensitive to being moved across mobos.

[huxley]

We didnt have any problems - but then again it was pretty much the same board.

[bingowings]

you'll have to do a re-install. Windows really doesn't like being mucked about with - if you swap drives it could work - but barely.

swapping drives will throw up countless hardware and software errors, so you'll end up having to format/re-install anyway.

[randombs]

i'm worried about mentioning it as it's not exactly a tool for people who don't know what they're doing (i'm pretty decent but when i tried it it didn't work, and i think it's designed for network administrators), but ms has a program called sysprep which i was told can be used to migrate windows to a whole new pc, hardware-wise. the idea is you set up your windows how you like it, with whatever apps and that, then you sysprep it and shut it down. when you next boot windows it'll set itself up automatically on the new hardware (and ask for drivers where necessary)

maybe others on here have tried it, but i'm afraid i can't offer any pointers as it didn't seem to prep when i tried it (and that was about 4 years ago)