You don't say what you plan to do with the hard drive that's being shifted.  Is to become a slave to the existing system drive?  If so, there's no great problem.  If it's currently a system drive, just rename it's Windows folder so the boot system of the pc you're shifting it to doesn't go looking in the wrong place for startup information.  Also, rename msdos.sys and io.sys to msdos.old and io.old, just in case they're attempted to be used.

I say this because I assume you might want to re-use this drive again as a system drive.  If you don't, delete the Windows folder entirely, along with the system files in C.

If you plan to boot from the drive you're moving, and not from the original incumbent drive, that's no bfd either.  However, the first time a drive boots after being moved into a strange environment, it's going to want to know how to handle all the new equipment it's being asked to work with.

The easiest way to do this is, when it asks where it's supposed to find the information about each device, is to point it at C:\Windows\inf.  You may have to spell this out as it may not be able to 'browse' there.

Ignore requests about stuff like the sound card, modem etc for the moment.  When it's settled down, and is able to reboot without asking for anything (and the display will look dreadful as it's in 16 colors), then run the motherboard CD and install all the correct drivers.

Other folks here will no doubt tell you to delete the contents of the Device Manager folder, before you start but I've not had much luck with that method.  The method I've described has always worked for me. 

These instructions won't work if you DON'T have the motherboard CD, obviously.  And it will be difficult even if you do have it, if the motherboard is more than 3 or 4 years old.  The manufacturers didn't particularly care about user problems a few years back, they've got their act together a little better now.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Barry Nelson 
  Subject: [PCBUILD] Hard Drive


  Is it possible to transfer a hard drive from one computer to another.

  One hard drive has wins 98 OS the other has wins 2000 OS.



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