Moving XP

[redbreast]

Help a novice pleeeze. I have had a new computer with no OS,can i use my genuine XP cd which i was using and wipe it off my old PC and load it on to my new PC and if so is it an easy (if anything on PCs is easy)
task or are there going to be problems. Thx in advance

[vehelpfulguy]

Well there are 2 types of XP licenses, Retail and OEM (there are others like Enterprise but they probably dont effect you).

Retail often comes in a box and is bought from PC World etc. With the Retail license you ARE allowed to move it from one PC to another.

OEM often comes with just a plastic sleeve and is bought by people who are building a PC (either a company or an individual), With an OEM license you are NOT (legally) allowed to move it from one PC to another.

If it has already been activated on the other PC you will be told to phone Microsoft when you try to activate it on the new PC.

You could say you had to replace the motherboard in the PC and hope you get away with it, at least it is worth a try.

I have never done this myself but some people have.

[vehelpfulguy]

Instaling XP is fairly easy (well I would say that as I have done it hundreds of times).

You will need the XP CD (this has to be the official Microsoft Windows CD, not a recovery disk)

You will need the product code (a sequence of 25? letters and numbers)

You will also need the drivers for the new PC, to install AFTER you have installed Windows. These will be for the motherboard, graphics, sound, network and so on.

If you dont install these you will find that some of the components on your PC will probably not work (or work very badly if windows installs some basic drivers).

If you have all that lot you are ready to go.

[vehelpfulguy]

The sequence to install XP is as follows (you can probably find a detailed step by step guide by searching the internet).

1) Turn on the PC and put the XP CD in the CD drive. Turn off the PC.

2) Turn the PC back on and it should "boot" from the CD. The Windows install will start and most of the questions are fairly simple.

3) You may be prompted to create a partition on your hard disk where Windows can be installed. This can be a little complex if you have never done it before.

4) During install, when prompted, make sure you change the language and keyboard layout to UK from US (this needs to be done in 3 or 4 places)

more...

[vehelpfulguy]

continued...

5) The install will proceed. During the install the computer will reboot a couple of times and each time will ask if you want to boot from the CD. Apart from the VERY FIRST TIME (at the begining of the install) you say NO.

6) The install continues (it can take 45 minutes or more) and will eventually finish showing the teletubbies green desktop.

7) Shut down the PC to save the status, then start up again and install the drivers. You may need to reboot after each driver install.

8) After the drivers have been installed you need to download all the Windows updates, install other software like anti-virus, firewall, adobe reader, java, shockwave, and so on.

I find a complete install of Windows from scratch to a state when I have installed all my software and tailored my desktop can easily take 4 or 5 hours.

Good luck

[vehelpfulguy]

Here is one step-by-step guide to installing XP.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp _sg_clean.asp

Not studied it in detail so cannot say if it is still accurate (but Paul Thurrott is one of the worlds experts on windows)

Note the install of XP Home and XP Pro do differ.

[Chaterbox]

vehelpfulguy you are so smart !

[matt1e]

create a slipstream disk of xp first if you can it will give you a much faster install time its quite easy to do just do a google search on "slipstreaming xp" and there will be an abundance of help
ps Vehelpful forgot to mention to set your bios to boot from cd as the first device if its not already

[vehelpfulguy]

>ps Vehelpful forgot to mention to set your bios to boot from cd as the first device if its not already

I deliberately left it out to avoid making it sound more confusing.

He says the hard disk has no OS so even if the CD is set to boot after the hard disk in the BIOS it should boot from the CD if there is no OS on the hard disk.

If there WAS an OS on the hard disk I would have said to change the boot order

[ACtheTROLL]

if you want to have a go at slipstreaming
try Nlite
http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

not for novices ... but if you enjoy fiddling
how to why to what to all on the website.

vhg has the rest covered