Old Inspiron to New Latitude w/ same drive

I'm using an Inspiron 4000. I replaced it with a Latitude C610 bought on eBay which checked out fine. I use Win XP professional.

I'm trying a shortcut here - I know this is not advised, but follow me here.

I'm trying to take the old drive out of the Inspiron and put it in the Latitude.

OK, I've got a perfect image of the drive backed up using Acronis True Image and I put that on a larger drive and pop it in the Latitude.

Of course, no go. I get a bluescreen flash and then it reboots, then flashes again. The bluescreen has a message on it but it is too fast and I cannot read it.

I fret for a bit thinking my shortcut has been foiled and then think, hey, why not do a windows "repair" and see if that gets the right drivers installed.

Sure enough - still no-go, now I can read the bluescreen. It says "A problem has been detected, etc" and gives me the STOP: 07B message - which means something like it can't find the boot sector, and that this is common when upgrading storage adapter hardware.

I'm guessing I need to get an XP original disk (probably SP2) with drivers on it for the Latitude and use that for repair.

Anyone want to weigh in on this?

Thanks for listening!

 

if you're putting a HD into a totally different machine you need to do a fresh install

 

Agreed - you have to do a reinstall when you put a different drive in your notebook.

 

OK, so how come it works with a desktop?

I just followed the plug-and-pray model.

The drive thrashes a bit, digs around to find the right drivers, and poof - XP was ready to go.

c-z

 

Either a fresh install or you could use your previous HD as an external HD and transfer the files from the old to the new.

 

You will need to do a new install

 

OK, short-cut foiled.

No reason to try it anyfurther (although I am still curious as to why it worked from the Inspiron to a desktop machine).

what do you recomend for transferring files and settings?

I was unhappy with MS's wizard last time I tried it.

 

best way is to just burn all your important files to a DVD+/-RW (or CD-R/RW) then copy them to the new computer. probably the cheapest method too.