Need to swap xp pro loaded drive into new HW box

Greetings from a new user!
I have a question regarding swapping a preloaded ( with all apps, etc) with Win XP pro into a newly asembled box, where nothing is similar to the box it is coming out of. Even the Hard drive is different ( I cloned the PATA hd in the existing pc to a 750 gig SATA drive for the new pc). Now I already made a slipstreamed cd including the sata drivers, OS and hotfixes integrated into it.

What I need to know is, will it be possible to install the Sata 750 gig Cloned drive into the new system using the so called "In-place Upgrade" method without losing my many custom setup programs, etc?
I had a link to a forum elsewhere that I lost, which outlined in detail how to do this, as I have done it successfully before, only by going from ATA to ATA drives, not from the original ATA loaded drive to a new SATA drive. I can't find the link anymore, nor the printout I did of it nearly 1 1/2 years ago when upgrading HW in a P4 box. And with this one, the MB, Drives, DVD drives, cpu (Quad core Intel on a a gigabyte MB) video card everything is completely changed. I own the retail version of XP Pro so the activation is not a big deal. I would just rather not spend three weeks reloading all the software and having to recreate all the custom laid out ini files for them all.
Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
Rip

 

Most likely, yes. As long as the OS was perfectly healthy with the previous hardware set up, performing a repair install (AKA in-place upgrade) should be just fine. I have done this dozens of times (probably over 125 times) and very rarely have I run into any problems. The worst case scenario is that none of the installed programs and custom settings will cross over. All the programs and documents and data will still be there and should be accessible, just the programs won't run. But this usually only happens when there is some type of user profile problem or other type of user account issues. Like I said, if the OS was running perfectly, chances are the cross over will go perfectly smooth. :-D

(the only way can actually lose any data is if you format/partition the drive)

 

I appreciate the rapid response, and my only fear is that the original pc had a PATA drive in it , that I cloned in the same box as the PATA drive to a new SATA drive, and I truly do not want to have to end up with any problems with my existing programs not running as some I spent weeks tweaking the ini files for, IE: Audio and Video editing software, and custom programs that use for clients and remote admin duties. I have had this ready to go for 5 months now, and that is what has held me back. The fear of losing all that time etc. I do , of course have complete current backups daily, so it would not be too bad. I just don;t want to get into the three weeks of reloading everything from scratch as I don't have the time to do it. I would if I had the time, as fresh is always best. I am planning on going for it Friday night and see where it takes me.
Thanks again for the advice. If anyone else out there has anything to add , feel free, I am open to anything that will prevent me from not getting this done overnight.

Rip
:cool

 

If I understand your post correctly you have a HDD (from PATA to SATA) with OS, DATA and lots of settings and you would like to install it into a complete new build, CPU and Mobo in particular!?!

Frustratingly OS's become tied to Motherboards and for the average user require a complete "reformat/reinstall" when added to another Mobo unless certain paramters remain true (constant):
- Exact same motherboard make and model or exact same chipset.

There are workarounds for this issue and here is a thread on this:

How To Change Your Motherboard, without having to reload windows

You will find 4 methods that can overcome this dilemma. My personal favourite would have to be method 1 especially as you have the slipstreamed CD of OS, updates etc etc:

Langa Letter: XP's No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option

Have a read through both threads and hopefully this is what you need. You may have to adjust the settings in BIOS for the HDD and make sure you have copies of the new Motherboard Chipset drivers ready.

 

I have exchanged motherboards in many, MANY PCs (including my own personal home PC when I upgraded the MB, CPU, and video card) and performed safe reloads of Windows successfully many, MANY times and done so without losing a single byte of data or any personal settings. True, it doesn't go perfectly smooth all the time, but I'd say that 85% of 'em went flawlessly. Like I said before, the only times I've run into problems have been when there were some underlying OS problems (fairly serious OS problems) that reloading couldn't fix, and it usually comes down to corrupt user profile info (or incomplete user profile info). So when the reload is finished, all the shortcuts and user settings are gone, but all the data (My Documents) is still there, and all the programs and apps are still there, but none of the software runs properly because all the profile specific info was lost (file associations, .dll associations, etc).