Adding a new Hard drive with existing Hard Drive

powellnicholas · 04-14-2009, 02:10 AM

Hi there, I have just upgraded my computer and therefore have my old one sitting around. I have a friend who has a really old and poor computer who wants to play a certain online game. It is possible to play that game on my old computer and so I would like to take the Hard drive from his computer and put it in my old one. My old computer runs windows xp and so does his. My old computer is a Packard Bell and his is an emachines computer. What do i need to do to sort this, can i just take his hard drive and swap it and connect it up and switch it on?

Thanks

**vladimirb** · 04-14-2009, 02:31 AM

Hello...
It depends if his operating system is OEM or retail copy...
If it is OEM, it will not run, you will probably get BSODs or restarts...
If it is retail, you can do a 'repair' of the system because your PCs has different Motherboards, and that means different chipset, audio, LAN, as well as graphic card...
If "repair' does not help, you need to re-install Windows XP on his HDD plugged onto your system.
This means if his copy of the Windows XP is retail, not OEM or illegal...

04-14-2009, 02:10 AM	#1 (permalink)
powellnicholas Registered User Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 22 OS: xp	Adding a new Hard drive with existing Hard Drive Hi there, I have just upgraded my computer and therefore have my old one sitting around. I have a friend who has a really old and poor computer who wants to play a certain online game. It is possible to play that game on my old computer and so I would like to take the Hard drive from his computer and put it in my old one. My old computer runs windows xp and so does his. My old computer is a Packard Bell and his is an emachines computer. What do i need to do to sort this, can i just take his hard drive and swap it and connect it up and switch it on? Thanks

04-14-2009, 02:31 AM	#2 (permalink)
vladimirb Mentor Hardware Team Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Banja Luka, Serb Republic Posts: 3,687 OS: xp pro sp3, Server 2003, Windows 7 Professional x64bit My System	Re: Adding a new Hard drive with existing Hard Drive Hello... It depends if his operating system is OEM or retail copy... If it is OEM, it will not run, you will probably get BSODs or restarts... If it is retail, you can do a 'repair' of the system because your PCs has different Motherboards, and that means different chipset, audio, LAN, as well as graphic card... If "repair' does not help, you need to re-install Windows XP on his HDD plugged onto your system. This means if his copy of the Windows XP is retail, not OEM or illegal... __________________ MCP - MCSA Cisco SMB Account Manager