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41 Responses for "Move Windows XP Hard Drive or Change Motherboard Without Getting Blue Screen of Death"

1. Starboykb July 9th, 2008 at 3:07 pm 1

   That was a great tips. how about the graphics and the others? did it affect any blue screen crash after successfully moved?

2. Kurbli July 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm 2

   What is the situation at step 3, if I have XP CD without SP and a downloaded SP3?

3. Raymond July 9th, 2008 at 3:21 pm 3

   @Starboykb: Moving graphics card usually doesn’t cause as much problem as moving the hard drive to another computer or changing a motherboard.

   @Kurbli: Ah, then I guess you’ll need to slipstream at least SP1 to the XP CD first because UBCD4Win did mention that it requires XP CD with at least SP1.

4. Stamatis July 9th, 2008 at 3:45 pm 4

   I have an easiest method to do that!
   Look this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082/en-us
   You only run this file (mergeide.reg) and that’s it! Now you can move your hard disk to another system.
   But if your system isn’t booting, you can’t do this from the windows.
   In this case, you must have a Winternals ERD 2005 Boot Disc and you must attach your registry, to run the .reg file. I have tried both 2 ways and it’s works!…Sorry for my really BAD English

5. Raymond July 9th, 2008 at 3:52 pm 5

   That’s a good solution Stamatis. Thanks for sharing!

6. Stamatis July 9th, 2008 at 3:57 pm 6

   You welcome Ray! You are the best!

7. Ammar July 9th, 2008 at 5:41 pm 7

   Thanks Raymond

8. Jan-Bert July 9th, 2008 at 5:52 pm 8

   Another method is use often is: first clone the HDD and then reinstall windows over the existing installation.

   Boot from the XP cdrom and choose to install windows (not repair) —with F6 it is also possible to load unrecognized drivers for the storage controller—. Install will then search your HDD for a previous installation of Windows which is should find and here you press R for repair. You will need a valid Product Key which goes with the CD.

   The installation CD you use must be in the same language as the original and if it is an OEM edition is must include at least SP2.

   This works both for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. With Vista it is even easier because if boot from the DVD you only need to use the repair option.

9. Jan-Bert July 9th, 2008 at 5:59 pm 9

   The above method is also a good way to repair a crashed windows installation. If it is a software problem you can use this method on the same hardware. But be sure you have the right CD and Product key.

   With a hardware problem, for example some bad blocks, try to get a copy onto a new HDD and then repair using the install method.

10. In-f3st July 9th, 2008 at 7:04 pm 10

    I changed my MBO and CPU from AMD to intel and XP automaticaly recognized them.

11. Mojo July 9th, 2008 at 9:31 pm 11

    Thanks

12. Nelson July 9th, 2008 at 10:01 pm 12

    Hello Folks,

    The other way is to use the botable win xp,make sure you boot from cd then select r,when the dos opens type fix boot and thy logging in just in dos.

13. tuxplorer July 10th, 2008 at 12:35 am 13

    Shouldn’t the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) of both comps be the same? Otherwise it’ll still BSoD.

14. tuxplorer July 10th, 2008 at 12:40 am 14

    I think this does not work when changing motherboard, only work for HDDs? Did you switch to a completely different board and yet it worked?

15. trendless July 10th, 2008 at 12:57 am 15

    Officially, Sysprep is the utility to accommodate moving Windows OS installations from one hardware configuration to another; however, I’m under the impression that if the ACPI and/or HAL is different from one system to the next, there won’t be anything to do but a repair installation (which is essentially the easiest supported way to move from one OS to another; no matter how you slice it, Windows will notice the hardware changes and ask for reactivation), as the system will BSoD upon attempted reboot.

16. MRDomino July 10th, 2008 at 2:56 am 16

    Thanks Raymond and Stamatis !!!!

    I use method of Jan-Bert (Option Repair XP), is slow but result.

17. MRDomino July 10th, 2008 at 2:58 am 17

    Question?

    There is some method that allows boot XP as the first time and recognize all the components?

18. Raymond July 10th, 2008 at 8:44 am 18

    tuxplorer: This does work when changing motherboards. I’ve already tested restoring my laptop’s backup image to my desktop which all of the hardwares are different.

19. Ray July 10th, 2008 at 9:50 am 19

    Beautiful article Ray!! BEAUTIFUL!! Thanx a million!!

20. jeff July 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am 20

    ei raymond thanks! this is so nice and Great!

21. ahmad maher July 10th, 2008 at 1:59 pm 21

    this is not enough , am sorry to say it, based on my try

    you also need to make the computer a standard computer and the VGA a standard one too as to say remove the drivers, that will make it work …. at least this is what i had to do, but thanks for the UBCD tip, did not know it contain such a program

22. trendless July 13th, 2008 at 11:27 am 22

    MRDomino: Sysprep will do exactly that. It tells Windows to reload the hardware configuration based on whatever components are present.

23. OAlexander July 19th, 2008 at 1:10 am 23

    Here is a method which I have tried and tested well over dozens of times, and it also describes how this can be done with a HD from a dead machine:

    http://www.mostlycreativeworkshop.com/article11.html

    Sometimes a drive ends up not being bootable on the new system. The fixboot / fixmbr wont help. I have not yet found an elegant method to resolve this.

    Interesting to read in the context is also:

    http://www.kmaantennas.com/Hard-Drive/Hard%20Drive.pdf

24. Ed September 7th, 2008 at 9:39 am 24

    Here is a challenge I like to see better solution:

    Move Windows XP hard drive to another system with RAID1.

    First I must build the empty RAID1 otherwise I cannot just put one disk and hope for rebuild as the RAID controller will not initialize. So I configure the RAID1 with empty disks. Then I did Ghost disk to disk from the old drive to the RAID.

    The problem: Stop 7B.

    The issue is that the RAID drivers are not in the standard collection of Windows XP. This is the time when you normally need to use F6 on fresh install for unrecognized mass storage device. (it is Dell Matrix onboard SATA)

    But how to do it? I wish the UBCD4Win had also a program to install any device driver in the offline Windows system. But I cannot find any such program or get another program I can run from USB drive inside UBCD4Win.

    Also, I tried to install the RAID driver on the OLD computer on the old hard drive before doing the Ghost again, but of course, there is no RAID controller there, so no luck as I do not know how to force the install without the physical controller.

    Finally what worked, doing Install and Repair with F6 and external floppy drive containing the RAID drivers. YUCK

    Is there a better way? Can drivers be forced to install without the actual controller? Can I install drivers on offline system?

25. mrx September 15th, 2008 at 12:10 pm 25

    thanks for the post it worked great and saved me a butt load of time

26. crazyl999 October 21st, 2008 at 5:51 am 26

    hey, could you just install the drivers for the new hardware before you move the harddrive over?

    Thanks

27. John Hansen March 4th, 2009 at 2:47 pm 27

    Hi. I have 3 legal copies of win xp pro sp2.

    I have moved them around all over and into new computers and never had to call microsoft or had any trouble booting.

    Today I just installed my winxp pro hard drive into a new computer and it booted right up.

    John Hansen

28. iLink April 7th, 2009 at 8:48 am 28

    Worked nicely, thanks. But now I am stuck with the “Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller” and the driver manual update cannot find ATI drivers?

    Anybody knows how to install that?

29. uhoh April 7th, 2009 at 7:36 pm 29

    thanks to ray for this method i always wondered what the problem was with that this will save a lot of cloning and formatting i run into this problem a lot thanks to Stamatis as well for the mergeide method both will be a great help

30. keil April 13th, 2009 at 6:10 pm 30

    great! you saved me from buying another copy of xp! everithing got well, just reinstalled drivers froms new mobo cd and vido card!.
    really thanks a lot!

31. Dave M April 18th, 2009 at 4:26 pm 31

    Thanks for that, I was hoping in my heart of hearts that the reboot cycle would end after a while. This certainly helped me out of my denial.

    my issue is somewhat adverse to the common problems I’ve seen on the net; I want to take my xp hdd out and put in a windows 98 hdd. Doing this with no prep results in the boot cycle. what am i to do (bearing in mind that i have a simple understanding of the machines at best)? i can’t see (nor can i imagine) a guide for the layman (such as myself) to work this problem.

    Any ideas, hints or points in the right direction are much appreciated!

32. mohab April 18th, 2009 at 6:35 pm 32

    Hi, this is my first ever comment on your site. I hope I win my first ever giveaway. Thanks

33. I Was Able to Lose T h i r t y P o u n d s in Only a Month May 7th, 2009 at 7:26 am 33

    Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for posting. I will likely be coming back to your blog. Keep up the good work

34. Banksy May 11th, 2009 at 12:43 am 34

    Hi, can this be done with a hard drive from a dell?

35. donna July 18th, 2009 at 3:20 pm 35

    I am trying to install a backup from an ide drive onto a SATA drive, moving the Windows Vista Business x64 installation with the Restore. I get the BSOD, and the endless reboot…I can’t find the driver for the SATA drive (or is it the controller i need to change/update?) I’m confused…any help out there? I have sooooo many programs, and then there are endless windows updates…I really don’t want to start from scratch if I can get this perfectly good backup to work.

36. Geir July 26th, 2009 at 5:35 pm 36

    Thanks to many people here for sharing and making help available to all!

    Here is my case:
    Fujitsu Siemens with Intel processor, and WIN XP SP3 crashed dead during thunderstorm. Motherboard broke.
    Replaced motherboard with with ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS, Socket-AM2+, and AMD Athlon X2+ processor.

    When booting from HD, I got short glimpse of BSOD. Hit F8 just before the windows XP logo. Then got BSOD visible. It told ***STOP 0×0000007E (…..) .

    Searched the Internet and came over a bunch of very helpful sites, but none were actually solving my BSOD problem, including Raymond’s site here.

    At last I found Jesper’s blog at

    http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/07/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx#12981

    Blog told me there is problem with XP SP3 when switching from Intel to AMD type processor.
    Problem was simply solved by doing this command in safe mode DOS prompt :

    ’sc config intelppm start= disabled’

    (Notice the space between ‘=’ and ‘disabled’! It must be there)

    I also renamed ‘intelppm.sys’ til ‘intelppm.sys.old’ in directory : \WINDOWS\system32\drivers , though this maybe is not necessary.

    Restarted PC, and then voila!
    Problem solved.

    Did not find out how to post a thank you to Jesper in his blog, so he gets it here : Thank you!
    I choose to post my case here at Raymond’s site since it was one of the first sites I came across.
    Thanks to Raymond for keeping this site with helpful information to all. Your help pointed me to the UBCD4Win boot CD which also has been very helpful in my troubleshooting process seeking solution for BSOD.

37. Sam December 1st, 2009 at 11:25 pm 37

    Hi Raymond, I am a little confuse here.

    On section (B)1. You said to “Download UBCD4Win and install.”
    Did you mean to install UBCD4Win on the hard drive that just moved to the new PC?
    So after completion of section A, the hard drive is able to boot up in the new PC?

    Thanks in advance.

38. progmanos December 9th, 2009 at 7:21 am 38

    I attempted to follow the steps in this blog post.

    However, I am still unable to boot from the hard drive in the “new” pc.

    I am getting a message that says:

    “A disk read error occurred.
    Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.”

39. Eric December 15th, 2009 at 6:05 am 39

    I get the message:

    “Builder has stopped because there are 29 build errors.”

    Most of these seem to be file not found errors. I tried two different XP Pro installation CDs, one OEM SP3 and one Retail SP2. Both have the same problem. I don’t know how to fix this.

40. Kosh January 3rd, 2010 at 1:40 am 40

    Not sure what all this UBCD4win business is about. I’ve successfully replaced a socket 775 mobo with a 1366 and kept installs of Win 2000, XP and Win 7 with no trouble at all.

    Just boot into safe mode, goto Device Manager, uninstall everything (do NOT reboot if it asks too) then shutdown. Swap motherboards and boot into safe mode. Let the OS detect all devices, cancel any Found New Hardware wizards and reboot when it’s finished. Install chipset drivers, audio and graphics drivers. Reboot.

    Job done.

41. Dads35 January 7th, 2010 at 2:38 am 41

    Good post simplest I’ve seen yet, but did you have to backup your install (disc, thumb, etc) prior to uninstalling everything???

    Would hate to have to web-search for all of those updates again… thanks for the post