can i transfer an XP or vista Hard Drive 2.5" or 3.5" internally into another Laptop/PC

K-tron said that its impossible because the installation of the original O/S is only designed for the MB and hardware that was installed on that particular PC. I agree.

but someone told me that they managed to do it, so whats the score.

*without making any external devices* has to be internal swap.

 

if i understand it right your question then using symantic ghost you can

 

am talking about a straight transfer. Taking the drive out system A and putting into system B.

 

no way, unless exact same machine.
if you try on a different machine dont expect it to work when you'll put it back in original machine.

avoid.

 

The problem with transferring the HDD is that Windows is pre-configured to use the drivers from the computer that the HDD was in when Windows was installed.

It will try to load those drivers when it boots and if it is the wrong driver then something won't work. The most critical drivers in my experience are the chipset and HDD interface. If Windows gets to load the wrong HDD interface driver then it won't see the HDD any more and the load process stops.

You can try using Safe Mode (press F8 when the Windows logo starts to appear). This avoids loading most of the drivers.

You can also try uninstalling all the devices in Device Manager as the last thing you do before shutting down the old computer and removing the HDD. Make sure that you have all the new device drivers downloaded and available, perhaps on a flash drive.

Even if you get Windows to work, it may then decide that it is an illegal copy (eg mismatch between original and current hardware configuration) and, as a minimum, refuse to download any updates.

John

 

In short, K-Tron is right.

 

No I dont see why it wouldnt work... My dad had his Sony FW laptop's hard drive made into an imagie (as far as I understood) and not the exact same copy is running on his new Dell M1330...

 

you can make an image and then use it as a data but that wasnt the question.

 

And only way this would work would be if the system had windows 2000 installed? like K-tron said.

 

I'm not saying it can't be done. I moved a HDD from one Samsung notebook (X60) to a newer model (X60 plus) which had a slightly different hardware configuration.

I'm saying that it might work if you can stop Windows from loading the wrong drivers for a few critical devices and probably the best way to do that is to uninstall the old drivers before shutting down the old computer.

John

 

But then, how different are the laptops the OP is using?

 

it will only work if they have the same hdd controller... i have done this before and it worked and what happen is when you first turn it on it loads all the drivers and then you have to restart and then it worked fine
if they have different controllers then bsods

 

what u mean same controller? i had same Controller and type and it didn't work from alienware to Dell latatude. For the reason's K-tron said.

 

Acronis True Image Workstation version WILL do an image and restore it to a different computer. There is an add in called Universal restore that you also must by. Dave

 

As someone said before, you need to have same sata chip so it can boot. Also you need to have same chipset on the motherboard and same CPU (it won't start if you take the hdd from a lappie with a AMD CPU and you put it inside a lappie with a C2D). The best way to do it is to uninstall almost all the hardware before you do the swap so when it first starts in the new computer it will be almost like a fresh install of OS.