I Had To buy A New Motherboard As My Old One Fryed For Some Weird Reason i have Now Upgrade To A 3200+ Amd Chip New Board And new Ram !! Small Problem As All The Hardware Changed Windows Will No Longer Boot ???

I Know This Is Because All The Drivers Have Changed And Windows Does Not Like This ! And Cause I Have Password Protected User Areas I Cant Even Copy It To A new Drive ! Is There Any Way In Which I Could Put My Hard Drive Into Another Computer And Delete The Previous Drivers And Add The New Ones So I Would Not Loose Anything

Thanks
Mike

You can slave this drive to access your data but in order to set up your new motherboard you will have to reinstall XP on the motherboard.

You can try a Repair Install which will retain your data and settings plus programs although a Clean Install would be the best overall bet.

Would work The Only Problem Is Slaving Wouldnt Work As All The User Areas Are Passworded And Encrypted... Erm I Suppose A Repair Might Work Too !! Would It Refresh The Drivers For The Basic Hardware Though ?

You would need to load your new motherboard drivers off the motherboard CD after the Repair Install.

but would the repair allow me to run the old copy of xp from the other hard drive ?

Sorry ... jephree got lost ...

"the other hard drive"?

I didn't know we were considering multiple hard drives.

You run the Repair Install on the hard drive that has your old XP on it.

sorry my fault !!

before my motherboard went wring i had xp installed !! had it for 2 years ( No Backups Im terrible ) The board Fryed So Replaced It Tryed Booting Xp IT Didnt Like !! Went out Paid £80 For A New Harddrive Brings It Home Puts It In Old Drive As A Slave Installed Xp Again !! The Slave ( Old Drive ) Had All Accounts On It Password Protected And Encrypted !! Therefor I Need To Take The Old Drives Off The Old Drive And Replace Them With The New Ones So As Not The Loose 2 Years Of My Childrens Photos And All My Work !!

Just one point: if you had only Password protection you can still access the data as slave via this process:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

However Encryption is beyond the scope here.


That being said what I suggest is put your old drive back in as Master and run a Repair Install on it. This should allow you access to the old drive as it was. If you want to continue using it then add you new motherboard drivers or just get you data then Clean Install XP if you want.

The drivers are not the only issue here. XP installs some vital data on the motherboard. Therefore in order to boot XP off of that old drive you will have to run a Repair Install with it as Master on this new motherboard.

but it will work ! even if its briefly

Yes it should.

Put your old drive in as Master. Leave your new drive out.

Boot your XP CD and run a Repair Install.

Most advisers advise backing up your data first but you do not have this option. So there is some risk but there always is.

I have run hundreds of Repair Installs and never lost any data.

Here is a thorough guide if you need it:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Again Mr. Stevens covers all the risks and options so it might look a bit overwhelming but the process is quite simple:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI