Driver issue; switiching HD from 6400 with nVidia card to Intel card?

Just swapped out my e6400 with the nVidia 160M GC fro a 6400 with the Intel card (due to heat issues).

I tried just swapping the hard drives so that I wouldnt have to reinstall the OS.
Its not letting me start Windows.

I think the issue is that I dont have the drivers on my older HD for the new motherboard/GC.

Is there any way to get this to work without having to do a clean install of the OS?

 

Oh oh, I did this once for an E6400 too. I don't think there should be a problem with booting the Intel system with the Nvidia drivers, but you should check if you've got the right SATA operation settings in the new system. I'm fairly certain an AHCI install doesn't play well with IRRT or ATA, etc.

How exactly does it fail to boot?

 

Well, I started with AHCI (accidentally) and then switched to AHCI; neither worked.

Its just telling me its is "unable to start windows".

So, it recommended to check for problems, which I did, but it said it couldnt fix the issue (whatever it is).

OH-and im using a WD Scorpio Blue 500gb Hard drive.

Thanks!

 

Did you try Safe Mode? How long from Windows starting to boot until you get the error message?

I would have expected the PM and GM versions of the Intel chipset drivers to be sufficiently similar to cause no problems. However, if you still have the old computer then relace the HDD and go into Device Manager and uninstall any devices relating to the chipset and video driver.

John

 

I'm not sure but as I remember Vista/XP (M$ OSs) has "feature" that recognize legal install of OEM sys. by chcecking some kind of checksum generated by "set of hardware" installed, some of parts you can change (like HDD or add RAM) but deffinitely you cannot change Mobo as this will require you to reinstall OS.

 

Those OEM installations use codes within the BIOS to detect legitimate activations if I remember correctly. Your swapping the hard drive would only cause a reactivation request to pop up if the hardware changed sufficiently...it would still boot however.

You need to double check the SATA settings on both computers, because Windows may not boot if they are different.

 

Not necessarily true... Windows Imaging / Ghosting is designed for this very reason. The problem is in the fact that the HAL is so different that it causes Windows to fail on boot (even with Windows 7--which handles hardware changes a bit better than Vista and exponentially better than XP).

The SATA drive settings could be the culprit, but in this case the OP has mentioned that he has set the new computer to be AHCI, just as the old one. The proper way to fix this is to run windows sysprep. Sysprep is designed for creating images and moving them to different computers. We do this a dozen times over at work in preparation for Ghosting.

These are the steps I would follow:

- Verify that you have setup the BIOS correctly on new system for the HD (AHCI)
- On old system, save everything, restart computer
- On old system after restart:
- log in as computer administrator
- Make sure everything is closed (all apps etc)
- Open an elevated command prompt. Change directory to: C:\Windows\System32\sysprep
- from that location type: sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown
- when computer shuts down, pull HD. Make sure the old computer does not restart with the hard drive still in it!
- Switch hard drive to other computer
- When Windows restarts it will re-install all hardware and reboot a few times, it will also launch the Windows Out-of-Box Experience (oobe)
- Choose a username, that is different than your old one. Call it Temp User or something
- Give your computer a name, do not set a password
- click through the rest of the menus (time zone, automatic updates etc).
- You then should be brought to the login page, showing your old user, and the new user.
- Login as your old user
- Wait for hardware to finish installing
- Restart computer
- Login as old user
- Control Panel – Users – Manage Another Account – Temp User – Delete Account – Delete Files
- Restart computer
- Check device manager. Install any drivers etc still needed.
- Your machine most likely will need to be reactivated. Do so now.