computer expert please

[ving]

received a new computer sans HD. if I get the hard drive from my old computer and put it in the new will it work? I assume that if the answer is yes then on first startup win XP will find new hardware that will need to be installed and thats about it all other programs should work?? any ideas?

or do i need to start from scratch

:confused013

[macmich]

i am not a expert ving
when i swapped this year
they made a external harddrive out of my old one and i accerss the files from that
cheers macca

[Tannin]

In general, no.

In detail, it depends on whether the plug & play system is able to adapt to the sudden change of 100% of the hardware. Usually it isn't.

Why not just buy a new hard drive and do the job properly? Cost is about $100. How much is your data worth?

[agb]

How was it you got a new computer without a hard drive?
New hard drive could be as cheap as $60 for 1Tb.
http://www.computeralliance.com.au/parts.aspx?qryPart=12419

[deef]

From personal experience, yes, it should work, having done it myself. As you said, it will be looking for new drivers for the motherboard, video card and probably other things, depending what is in the new machine when doing that first boot. So when you do the change, have all the driver disks and windows disk handy to instal the motherboard drivers and whatever else is asked for.

Of course it goes without saying (but I will ... LOL) that you have all your data on the hd backed up before pulling it out of your old machine.

Good luck.

[Speedway]

Hi David.
Q 1. Why sans HDD? A new Sata 500G HDD is under $40.
Q 2. What is the old HDD (SATA or IDE) and capacity?
I would get a new 500G HDD, fit that and install your operating system and program files to that. Get a USB enclosure (IDE ones are available on E-Bay for under $10 with power supply) and fit the old Hard drive to that, then transfer all the wanted data to the new drive, check that there is no corruption, then format the old drive and use it as an external back up. If you need more capacity 1Tb drives are only $60- $80 and can be added as necessary.
Keith.

PS I agree with Tony that you would most likely not be able to just run the old HDD as the driver conflicts would cause too many problems.

[colinbm]

Not so simple Ving.
I have had HD replaced or swapped & it is back to0 square one each time :-(
You can save the data you have, but the operating system & programs have to be done again & all setup, then the old data can be swapped back onto it.
So get an external drive & backup all your data etc.
A pain in the buttocks I know only too well ;-)
Cheers
Col

[ameerat42]

I'd go from scratch. Too many changes to the hardware for the OS to effectively handle. Time wasted thus could be better spent doing a new install.
(But I'm not an expert.)
Am. (Not!)

[Rattus79]

I've tried to do exactly that before. It was a failed attempt.

What I do is to have backup of my main windows partition with my most common installed programs on it done about a week after a fresh copy of xp installed. That way, if anything happens, I just need to grab my email .pst file and that's about it. Always have your "my documents" folder stored on a seperate partition.

If windows falls over, you don't need to go through the whole thing again, just format that main partition (I use a linux boot CD for this) and move the backup over again. Job's done.

It's not a fix for this upgrade, but may help on future 'ahem' Microsoft related screw ups.

[ving]

ok that pretty much answers the question and it is as i thought. if it can be done its not an easy task.

the computer was given to me by my father as a gift. it has a HDD in it with operating system installed. i just didnt want to go thru the process of reinstalling everything over again.... oh well.

[phild]

Usually with XP you can do a repair install and all will be well, I've done it many times at work on our PC's when motherboards have failed to save downtime. It's not difficult BTW.

[Cage]

Hi David

I've previously done what you asked about, swapping out one HDD into another set-up.

Provided there is compatibility with the connections, i.e. SATA or IDE, the OS on your old HDD will have generic drivers for your basic hardware, usually enough to get you up and running, then go on-line and Microsoft will look for the latest drivers for the rest of your hardware.

The other alternative is to run with your new set-up and install your old HDD as a second drive. It's then an easy task to drag 'n' drop files from your old HDD to the new one.

You may have problems with validation if you run your old HDD in the new set-up as MS may deem it to be a new computer, particularly if you have downloaded the Validation tool in XP. Vista and W7 have it built in.

Mate, the bottom line is it's worth a try.

[Tannin]

I've previously done what you asked about, swapping out one HDD into another set-up.

Provided there is compatibility with the connections, i.e. SATA or IDE, the OS on your old HDD will have generic drivers for your basic hardware, usually enough to get you up and running, then go on-line and Microsoft will look for the latest drivers for the rest of your hardware.

Sorry. Just not true.

The reason two people here have tried this and it has worked is because they just happened to be swapping from a system which was quite similar to the new system in the key parameters. If you swap between two identical systems it always works. If you swap between two systems using the same motherboard chipset it nearly always works. If you swap between two systems using different but related motherboard chipsets it quite often works. If you swap between two systems with unrelated chipsets, it almost never works. In practice, it is much more common to be swapping between unrelated chipsets. (I couldn't tell you even roughly how many drive swaps and motherboard changes I and my staff have done, but certainly some tens of thousands. If there was a better method, believe me, we would have found it years ago.)

Note that "works" may not mean "works well and is reliable, fast, and stable". If in doubt, a clean install is always best.

Note also that these comments pertain to healthy, uninfected, undamaged systems with a straightforward history and no software weirdness - i.e., about 2 out of 3. The remaining ones will give you trouble no matter what chipsets are involved.

A "repair install", by the way, is so close to a complete fresh install in terms of the disruption involved and the time it takes, that you might as well do the whole thing and know it has been done properly.

[colinbm]

Do you still have a dollar from each swap, " certainly some tens of thousands " :lol:
Col

[geoffsta]

Certainly go for the re-install. Try to use the old stuff (Which will work) and it will be as slow as a snail in a traffic jam.
You can buy a cradle (Internal and external) to take you old drive. Then when you are satisfied that you have all the data off it that you need. Format it and use it as a backup.

[Tannin]

Do you still have a dollar from each swap?

Nope.

Oh I got a dollar from each one, quite a few dollars, Colin, but most of them went straight back out again to meet the payroll (not to mention the various other expenses, of which there were plenty). Various others of those dollars I got to put in my pocket - they are long since spent now, alas. These days I am semi-retired and only do maybe one or two a week, on average. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

[ricktas]

Computers can be very sensitive as Tannin says. I recently did a BIOS upgrade, and once done, the computer ran fine, except it failed to recognise that my PC had an SSD drive in it, and I had to reformat the SSD and re-install Windoze onto it, to get it working as I wanted.

As Tannin says, sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't. Plug-n-Play, is really Plug-n-Play IF you are lucky :D

[Tannin]

Plug-n-Play, is really Plug-n-Pray

(Spelling corrected.) :)

[ving]

anyhow... dont worry guys. i am going with the whole new system :)
w7 looks like fun. and this computer is much better.

[arthurking83]

To add to Tony's (common sense) points of view, even a small(but significant) change in the BIOS can lead to boot failure, so a change doesn't even have to involve any hardware changes either.

I did this some time back on my current box, where I wanted to see if a change from IDE to AHCI in the BIOS would help speed up one single solitary external eSATA drive I was having (speed)troubles with.

In a word it did help, but at the expense of booting up the PC again.
The system change from IDE to AHCI required a change within the Windows OS prior to the BIOS change, which was mentioned in a warning... which of course I didn't read!!! did I ? ... but I'm prone not to doing anyhow, so I was doomed to reinstall the OS all over again anyhow.(system was rather new anyhow, and I tend to do a few installs until I find a good balance of speed and stability anyhow).

Anyhow! I was under the impression that Windows XP was tied into particular pieces of hardware ??? :confused013
That is, it's not a simple matter of changing to a new PC with an old hdd, the OS sees too many changes in hardware(I think that new 4 pieces were the limit) and then you had to go through the process of registration, and verification all over again via the M$ site.

[ving]

anyhow, thats for your lengthy reply but it doesnt matter now... :th3:

[mongo]

......w7 looks like fun..........

It can be a pain in the bum if you are very happily using photoshop CS3 on your current XP computer and buy a new Windows 7 in which case CS3 will not work. You then have to start all over again beginning with having to buy photoshop CS5 - not cheap. Of additional irritation is that Mongo really does not need or want CS5 at all - he barely uses approx. 5 to 8% of the capabilities of his current CS3 !!!! So, not going near Windows 7 for some time.

[arthurking83]

It can be a pain in the bum if you are very happily using photoshop CS3 on your current XP computer and buy a new Windows 7 in which case CS3 will not work. You then have to start all over again beginning with having to buy photoshop CS5 - not cheap. Of additional irritation is that Mongo really does not need or want CS5 at all - he barely uses approx. 5 to 8% of the capabilities of his current CS3 !!!! So, not going near Windows 7 for some time.

Could be a futile path to explore Mongo(and anyone else), but in some instances, you can install some older software in XP mode, where the software runs in a virtual Windows XP mode(or something to that effect).

I don't know if this will work for CS3 or not, but I have some software to electronically tune my car(runs on LPG and the software is for tuning the LPG system) and it's only good to run on WinXP. It failed to install natively in Win7, which was a real bummer, as I purchased a 10" tablet with Windows7 on it specifically to run this software... but I then ran the installer in WinXP SP3 mode, and it all worked perfectly :th3:

Installed, and now I can tune my car 'on the run'(or so to speak).

If you rightclick the installer file(in Win7) there is a context menu to run this program in some kind of compatibility mode or whatever it is.

No guarantee that it will work for every software that is WinXP limited, but it's worth a try.

FWIW: there is a slight wee bit of an insignificant issue with my car tuning software tho. On my Tablet, the quick launch icon always turns to dust for some reason? The icon itself works, but after a a few restarts the icon image turns to a generic image instead of the software specific image(a white T inside a blue square). On the desktop, there is no issue. Apart from this one trivial issue tho, the software runs exactly as it did in Win XP. Also of note is that the Win 7 desktop is 64bit, the tablet is only 32bit(not an issue for me tho!) and the old desktop was WinXP 32bit. ie. makes no difference to the software if the OS is 32 or 64bit.

Also, some software is strange to install too.
A mate purchased a cheap laser printer for office work(on my recommendation). It was a Xerox cheapie, with cheap (genuine) cartridges as replacements ... so his future printing needs were subsequently negligible.
Xerox state that it is compatible with Win Vista and Win 7 XP, but looking deeper into it, it was a very old model, and the original driver was written for NT4.
Had massive issues installing the driver using various methods, which included updating the driver via windows driver update, and manually locating the driver file(s).
I felt like a complete tool in having recommended it all to him and now there seemed to be no way to install the drivers, even tho Xerox have the drivers for Win Vista/7 available for both 32 and 64bit.
Made no sense, until I did a quick Gooly search and found a few others in the same situation.
The problem, it turns out, was that in using the driver update via Windows, you tend to look in the folder named 'Drivers' and into the sub folders called '64bit Drivers' due to the common sense of it all.
The file required when using the Win driver update process was in the root folder, and it was simply called setup.inf!
There was no information on how to install the driver from Xerox at all(that I saw anyhow), and by using the (obvious??) Setup.exe file only returned an 'driver install failed, due to NT4 kernel mode driver incompatibility' message! That was it.
Needless to say, once the info on how to install the software was found, and even tho it made absolutely no sense to do it that way, it worked and the printer now works perfectly and cheaply.

Oh! and don't get me started on the ordeal I had with Quicken about a year ago .. bloody computers! :mixed0:

[mongo]

Immense thanks Arthur for your comprehensive post. Mongo read it a couple of time with great interest.

So, eventually when Mongo must move up to a new computer which will no doubt have Windows 7 on it (or maybe its then successor ) , Mongo will try installing CS3 on it in using installer in WinXP SP3 mode. If it works – well and good. If not, by then, Mongo may not mind as much having to go to CS5 (he will have had some decent use out of CS3 before having to trash it while it was still useful).

One thing intrigues Mongo, however. If it is installed in this mode, will Mongo get any of the alleged advantages of windows 7 or will it still run at the same speed etc as if it were installed on windows XP. If the latter, there will not be any great advantage in buying the new computer for this purpose. Mongo may need to get more advice about this aspect but your post Arthur has go Mongo really thinking. Thanks again.

PS – Mongo is glad that Ving seems to have settled his situation

[ricktas]

Just thought I might add : Computer Expert.

An Ex is a has-been and a sPurt is a drip under pressure

[ving]

...and i dont use PS so :p

[arthurking83]

LOL!

I have no idea if there are any performance issues in running software (in W7) under the WinXP compatibility mode, but I doubt there will tho.

My software(that I run.. not write! :p) is very small and lightweight. The speedier PC specs make it run fast by default! On my Tablet the software still runs fast(as I said it's very lightweight, uses hardly any resources, not like a image editing program that uses up massive hdd and memory resources.

I suppose that eventually you may end up realising that 64bit software(and OS of course) may be a better way to go anyhow(is CS3 64bit?) simply for the ability to address more RAM.
That is, when it's time to update Mongo's PC, you will almost invariably update the hardware. In doing so, there is a very high likelyhood that you will also increase many of the system's hardware specs, CPU speed, and more importantly the number of gigabytes of RAM. As Ram is cheap, this seems to make a lot of sense, and as cameras pixel count increases, so do file sizes. I'd hazard a guess that Mongo's next PC will have at least 8G of RAM within, and even tho 32bit software happily runs within 64bit OS(well at least it does so on Windoze), wisdom dictates that the software that can most benefit from the increased memory addressing should be able to access it all. Hence, it will be time to update yoru CS3 to a 64bit software anyhow.
LR is cheaper than CS, and if you don't use all the power of CS, maybe LR is the way forward.

of course, as you may or may not know, I only use View and Capture NX'es, which are only 32bit(on my 64bit Win7 PC), and I have no issues at all. Maybe there is good for Nikon to introduce a 64bit version of their software(they are very resource hungry afterall!), but I find CNX to be as fast as I could hope for. Besides it's glacial pace in performing noise reduction, it's as good as instantaneous and this is due to fast hard drives I ended up using, and many of them. With a few raw files opened at once and copying edit steps from one to many, maximum RAM usage I've ever seen in CNX has been just shy of 2G(I have 8G installed), I've had a few programs use very close to the full 8G allocation ..... 7.something Gig's has been the most I've seen from IDImager, and upwards of 6G from LR on occasion.
I reckon some of these programs may have used more if more RAM had been available too, but I've never had a system crash in all this time.

Actually!,.. a few days back was the first time in about 10 years I've had a PC crash on me(my PC's that is). I was running FF and looking at a large file online, and it turned out I had a graphics driver issue that eventually caused the PC to crash(BSOD). WOW! haven't seen one of them for so long, it was actually quite cool to get one again after all this time. (bloody WinMe!! :P)
Turned out I've been missing the "optional" nVidia driver update available for quite some time, and mine was lagging behind the times a little. So far so good now. Just a strange experience to have happen.

[Cage]

Immense thanks Arthur for your comprehensive post. Mongo read it a couple of time with great interest.

So, eventually when Mongo must move up to a new computer which will no doubt have Windows 7 on it (or maybe its then successor ) , Mongo will try installing CS3 on it in using installer in WinXP SP3 mode. If it works – well and good. If not, by then, Mongo may not mind as much having to go to CS5 (he will have had some decent use out of CS3 before having to trash it while it was still useful).

One thing intrigues Mongo, however. If it is installed in this mode, will Mongo get any of the alleged advantages of windows 7 or will it still run at the same speed etc as if it were installed on windows XP. If the latter, there will not be any great advantage in buying the new computer for this purpose. Mongo may need to get more advice about this aspect but your post Arthur has go Mongo really thinking. Thanks again.

PS – Mongo is glad that Ving seems to have settled his situation

At the risk of being told I don't know what I'm talking about, again, I'm currently running Windows 7 64bit and CS3 with no problems. If I may give you a little bit of advice, learnt from personal experience, Windows 7 eats 4GB of RAM in anything over idle mode and needs 8GB to run happily on some programs.

[arthurking83]

At the risk of being told I don't know what I'm talking about, again, I'm currently running Windows 7 64bit and CS3 with no problems. If I may give you a little bit of advice, learnt from personal experience, Windows 7 eats 4GB of RAM in anything over idle mode and needs 8GB to run happily on some programs.

Windows on it's own accord will not use more than about 1G. My new install used up only 700-800Meg initially until I started allowing more services and processes to load up by default.
Now if I have more than 1.2G in use, I start to worry again. I have 8G, and with ViewNX2, CaptureNX2 running and processing an image, I see up to 2 G in use ... possibly just under 3 G max, with a few images running concurrently.
If you have 4G in use at ever start up, then you have many third party processes also running.
I don't have any Win7's lower than Pro, and if you have Pro or higher, you have a Resource Monitor to use a a guide to know which processes are using up 'all your memory'.
Easy way to access ResMon, is to Ctrl-Alt-Del, hit the Performance Tab where it tells 'ya how much CPU and RAM is in use, and look for the Resource Monitor link tab at the bottom edge of that screen.
A lot of folks will find that they have many unnecessary services running that simply aren't needed.. such as when you install many third party software, these software usually install update services to allow themselves to be updated automagically. Other software also install pretty useless services eg, Nero to allow the user to drag and drop files directly onto a CD/DVD/BR disc more easily. Windows does this by default anyhow! And I remember Nikon software(and I suspect most camera makers generic software) also has a service installed that help it to start up when you connect your camera, or memory card to the PC to download the images.
If you don't make the effort to turn these services off, they simply snowball into a massive waste of available resources.

I turn off all of those wasteful M$ Office services that usually end up installed by default, Adobe's PDF Reader updater(seriously?? :rolleyes:).
If you have any Apple software installed(like iTunes), expect it to have many updating services up and running as well, one for iTunes itself, one for the updater, one for the updater to the updater program :p .. one for QuickTime, and all the other associated updaters for that one too :D
Printers/Scanners/Backup software from external USB drive vendors.. all pretty much useless and easy to do manually, but all compound the problem.

What invariably happens is that most people end up complaining that Windows itself seems slow and sluggish, when the reality is that it's the thirdparty software vendors that all do the real damage!

[ving]

But i now have 8 gb ram... and 64 bit w7 and stacks of room and a fast 1gb gfx card .... why cant it make coffee?

Sent from my TR718D

[tcdev]

At the risk of being told I don't know what I'm talking about, again, I'm currently running Windows 7 64bit and CS3 with no problems. If I may give you a little bit of advice, learnt from personal experience, Windows 7 eats 4GB of RAM in anything over idle mode and needs 8GB to run happily on some programs.
If your system requires 8GB of RAM to run any one particular program, then you have serious problems and probably need to reinstall Windows.

I have 6GB in my work desktop machine and I run some seriously demanding software, notably professional circuit / PCB design and programmable logic software, as well as software development environments. And I do mean, often all at once - with email and web browser perpetually open - without any perceivable slowdown in performance. 6GB is overkill for most casual users.

I also have a laptop with 3GB RAM and it happily runs CS4, as well as the above-mentioned programs, though I tend to run less of these in parallel on the laptop.

[mongo]

But i now have 8 gb ram... and 64 bit w7 and stacks of room and a fast 1gb gfx card .... why cant it make coffee?

Sent from my TR718D

It does ! - its just that it is not drinkable by humans , cows or Mongos

[mongo]

At the risk of being told I don't know what I'm talking about, again, I'm currently running Windows 7 64bit and CS3 with no problems. If I may give you a little bit of advice, learnt from personal experience, Windows 7 eats 4GB of RAM in anything over idle mode and needs 8GB to run happily on some programs.

This is interesting to note. The net had many examples where it works and does not work. A bit hit and miss it appears.
we tried to install CS3 on Mrs Mongo's new i5 PC win7, 8gb RAM , etc. It appeared to work but caused other problems e.g. it knocked out her email i.e "outlook" - so we had to uninstall it.

[Butts]

This is interesting to note. The net had many examples where it works and does not work. A bit hit and miss it appears.
we tried to install CS3 on Mrs Mongo's new i5 PC win7, 8gb RAM , etc. It appeared to work but caused other problems e.g. it knocked out her email i.e "outlook" - so we had to uninstall it.
Mongo, one alternative (which I use) is to create a VM instance (read up about Virtual Machines), run XP on it and install all your 32bit applications under it.
Win7 is designed for 64bit processes, and although running 32bit apps is achievable they don't always function as expected.

[ving]

It does ! - its just that it is not drinkable by humans , cows or Mongos

Wel whats the point of that! Who ir what can drinkit then? :p

Sent from my TR718D