Swapping HDDs without formatting the OSes?

[kimhoong79]

Greetings,

I swapping my older PC with my girlfriend's since hers is better than mine, except the HDD.

The problem right now is I would like to swap the HDDs between these 2 PCs without formatting them. I do not want to waste so much time on reinstalling the OSes and the software, not to mention making back-ups for all files and documents.

I know that swapping HDDs with Windows XP Pro installed will cause error because of major hardware changes eg motherboard.

A friend of mine suggested me to boot the system in safe mode. Then delete the harddisk controller and reboot. It will auto detect back the controller during the next boot up. It sounds promising but I would like to seek for clarification on this before trying out.

Or if there's any better methods for my case, kindly suggest them to me. Thank you in advanced.

 

[bcastner]

thread779-1277021

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Users Helping Users

 

[barny2006]

there's also another way of swapping hdd's which was in an article on about.com, titled:

How to Reinstall Windows XP Without Having to Reactivate With Microsoft.
here's the link:

http://netsecurity.about.com/od/windowsxp/qt/aaqtwinxp0829.htm

 

[kimhoong79]

Thanks for the links.

I changed all the devices' settings to Windows XP's default and thought of booting it up in the new PC but unfortunately it crashed. Then, I did a repair reinstallation and it's done now. No data loss.

Thanks again.