PCA Forums

Sometimes I think about the idea of upgrading (mobo, cpu, ram, maybe PS if need be) but I don't want to do anything with my HDD as is.
If I do it, I'd like to just be able to use the same new (loaded) HDD w/o seeing a BSOD and that's seemingly always what I've experienced in the past requiring me to do a fresh OS install, everything from scratch and that's no fun.
I know that it's possible with XP but last time or two, didn't go as planned.

Better odds with Vista (like upgrade first)? As much as most IT people seem to hate Vista, my work laptop has it and I don't mind it one bit. I'd have 2gb's ram anyway.

90% of the time you're going to see a BSOD when you change motherboards. What you can do, is a Repair Install of XP. It takes about 45 minutes and after you install your new drivers you should be back up and running no problem.

GL!

eGo

you can also use a bare metal restore from an image to load onto disparate hardware. acronis and backup exec both have those features. you can do it in the 60 day free trial of backup exec system recovery software (i posted about it a few weeks back). it basically does a sysprep to the image before loading it onto the new system. you would need to load drivers, etc afterward (or slipstream them into the image if you like).

different chipsets = nono for windows

Not worth the glitches that happen afterward in my opinion. I'd much rather reload windows. Also, by this point, it's probably due for a reinstall.

You can usually get away with it, but there are caveats. I haven't used the "baremetal" option in Acronis. I usually make a backup image first, then manually uninstall all drivers (a Windows repair install will strip drivers but won't uninstall them and you'll have a lot of potentially conflicting driver registry entries in there), then move the drive to the new PC and do a repair install of the OS.

However I personally won't do this on my own workstation anymore. You're going to inherit a lot of crap in the registry from the old hardware. My advice is to bite the bullet and do a clean install. Write a detailed checklist of things you need to migrate and install, and prioritize in order of what you need to have working first (when I do this I make sure everything I need to run my business day-to-day is installed first). Put aside a weekend for it. Send the wife and kid to your in-laws to get them out of your hair :-)

Well, I DO have my two older HDDs as a backup with everything there except a couple new Steam game DLs (not a problem there).

I think that if and when I do upgrade, I'll just start from scratch then and install Vista too.

Keep in mind that you can copy the entire Steam folder from the old HDD and then just re-install Steam and you'll have all your games and saved profiles without having to download them again.