Member Avatar for starcraft

Hi, my window XP is running out of space in my old hard drive (9GB Maxter), I want to migrate the OS to the new drive (WD 80GB). I used the WD tools to copy the drive. It took two hours but everything went fine. Then I reboot to the new drive and discount the old drive, XP start booting but it got hung at the window XP blue screen and just sit there for a long time. Did I missed something?

Does window XP support hard drive migration? What the best route to do it. If I need to reinstall, would my old key work? Can I initialize/register the key twice?

Thanks for your advice..

  • 2 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 123 Views
  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by starcraft

Dani AI

Generated

— Cloning can copy files but still leave the new disk non-bootable. The usual culprits are: the MBR/boot sector or the partition "active" flag was not copied; BIOS or master/slave jumpers are wrong; or XP cannot access the disk (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE) because the clone method changed how Windows sees the disk. is right that a sector-by-sector image tool (Ghost/Acronis/etc.) that copies the MBR is the safest route.

Quick checklist to diagnose and fix the hang:

  1. Reattach both drives. Boot the original drive and use Disk Management to confirm the new disk has the cloned partition and that it is marked Active.
  2. Check jumpers and BIOS: set the drive you want to boot as the primary/master and make sure BIOS boots from that drive.
  3. If the clone did not copy the MBR/boot sector, boot from the XP CD into Recovery Console (press R) and run fixmbr, fixboot, then chkdsk /r. Also verify NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM exist in the drive root.
  4. If you used a file-copy mode instead of a disk-image mode, redo the copy with a true disk-clone (sector-by-sector) option so partition table and MBR are preserved.

About the product key: replacing the hard drive in the same PC normally does not invalidate your key. Retail keys move freely; OEM licenses are tied to the original motherboard but are fine when you only change the HDD. You may need to reactivate; if online activation refuses because of repeated activations, phone activation with Microsoft will clear it.

If troubleshooting is too fiddly, a clean XP install on the new drive plus restoring user data (Files and Settings Transfer Wizard or restore from backup) is often faster and gives a known-good bootable system. Always keep a full backup of important files before experimenting.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for Member #2466

you could use Norton Ghost to make an image of your drive to copy to the new drive. OEM manufacturers do it constantly.

You'll be able to re-register. I think XP should have a hard disk migration utility. I'd say that if you took your 80GB drive...installed windows on it...booted up into it...slaved in your 9GB drive...used the migration tool to migrate your settings over...saved anything you needed saved...and re-registered...you'd be set. I did it with Pro not long ago and while I had to reinstall all the programs I had, at least I didn't lose my settings.

Member Avatar for starcraft

Great. I also think if I can use the Window XP PRO backup utility, which backup the old C: Drive and then I reconnect the new C: drive and restore XP to it. Would that work? Thanks.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.