Swapping HDs between two different PCs
 

Just had call from daughter at uni (half a world away) that her IBM Pentium 2 has died. (Not recognising the hard drive on start up, gobbledgook on screen.)

Question: I know it’s not possible to set up software on one Pentium 4 to run on another Pentium 4, (or if it is possible to overcome that hitch, I’d love to know how), but would her P2 work if I set up a hard drive with Win 2000, Office and all the usual stuff (or Win 98, but preferably not) on my P3 and then sent the HD to her?

It might just work, but Windows might have a hard time recognising where the hell it is and choke recognising all the new hardware. It'd be easier to send a formatted HD and setup windows etc. from scratch.

It's certainly worth a try but it would be wise to try it out locally with a friend/colleague's PC before you send it. There are BIOS and Motherboard issues but I have done similar with Win 95 and 98 on small HDs in a Grandfather Pentium and transplanted them to a similar Host.

I've never heard about the P4 problem you mention. Haven't got beyond the P3/500 MHz stage. One Day, who knows...:hmm:

This is most unlikely to work in the "grown up Windows" (ie XP/2K/NT) world. I have even swapped disks between two supposedly identical laptops (Dell Inspiron 4100, of which we have many in our office) and it utterly failed to allow the correct screen driver to be installed and working.

You might get away with it in the "baby WIndows" world (ie 95/98/SE) if the motherboards are similar enough, but I would start in Safe Mode the first time in the new PC, so as to avoid PnP hell.

W

Thanks for the replies, gents. I suspect you’re right re ‘grown up windows’, WCollins> However, I was hoping that with the older machines, I might get away with a software pre-load if I deleted/disabled all hardware possible on the last shutdown before sending so it wouldn’t get too confused when it found all the different hardware on first start up on the new machine.

Win2K is more forgiving than you think. You can even go to the Add/Remove Hardware wizard and remove those Question Marks with "Unknown" against them. Best thing I did, once, when I had Multiple cases of a CD R/W Drive and the poor thing didn't know which one it was supposed to be host to.

Turned out that I deleted the Motherboard and all its offspring so on the next boot there was a protracted series of discovering hardware (of course all the drivers were there) and at the end of it the machine was much more sprightly and the sole CD R/W was happily accepted.

Its fun to delve into the unknown like this because you're not losing data and you can have some pleasant surprises.

fobotsco Could we compromise on "Win2K is sometimes more forgiving than you think, and sometimes considerably less so"?

The Inspiron example I mentioned I was working on identical hardware, and I did everything I knew how short of reformatting, and the system just would not accept the correct graphics driver.

W

Compromise? Compromise? Compromise?

Oh All Right :)

I'd love to have got my hands on the beast. I'd 'ave showed it.

As I said, getting into the Hardware list and ripping out stuff can have a remarkably emetic effect on Win2K. Like a laxative really.

This option is taken away from us in XP. So its into the Registry we go with trepidation.