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General discussion

Migrating OS.

Jan 31, 2005 11:07PM PST

I have a 3 year old computer. As I have a perfectly good box, video card and optical drive. I was thinking of buying a new mobo w/Athlon 64 CPU and PC3200 memory. I want to use a single 160gig SATA HDD and currently have a 20gig ATA133 master and 40gig ATA100 slave and it would require migration from those 2 to the new HDD of my OEM Windows XP OS and files. As I will still be using at least some of the hardware the OEM OS came with, will the license still be usable? I would like to migrate it along with all other files rather than reload (if the license is reusable) the OS+SP2+fixes. I have cable broadband but it's still a pain. Thanks folks! Legallity is my concernHappy

Discussion is locked

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Is it OEM or something that came with ...
Jan 31, 2005 11:26PM PST

HP or other? You may learn the brutal lesson about OEM is that it does not always transfer. As to legal or not, it doesn't matter. XP enforces the license and you can't call Microsoft for OEM support.

Your post is light on detail.

Bob

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Bob, the OS
Jan 31, 2005 11:40PM PST

came with my computer that was built by a local firm. They provided a Windows XP OEM CD (NOT a restore disk) and CDs for all other software and drivers. If I load from scratch, I will have to update all of them. Migration of the complete files would remove this problem. I will be moving up from Athlon XP 2000+ and a PC133 mobo. I have never had to use MS support and stay on auto updates. I was planning on dropping the old HDDs into an older rig I have to do the migration. Can it be done? P.S. The older rig belonged to a friend of mine and is almost identical to mine.

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Better than 50%
Feb 1, 2005 12:14AM PST

That OEM version isn't as locked to the hardware as the others. But it still falls into the issue that if it doesn't reactivate then you have no recourse but to keep running on the original PC. You agreed to this issue when you went with an OEM XP version to save the bucks.

The next issue will be that XP will not boot when you move the hard disk.

Before you move the hard disk, make sure there is nothing you can't lose. Any file will be in jeopardy during this move. Next read http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php to understand that it will ask to reactivate. Then http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/other/motherboard/ to pick out what you'll be doing next.

You will be seeing a lot of bad boots, errors, and will get to run the repair install a few times. This may frighten those that don't have any backup.

Bob

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Thanks Bob!
Feb 1, 2005 12:27AM PST

Based on what you tell me and my own instincts, I'll shell out some bucks and get a FULL VERSION Windows XP Home and back up my other files for later transfer.
Problem is I have 22gig of music files on the slave drive! I'll get some peanuts to chew on while I use about 5 DVD-Rs to copy. Is my math right;)?