Hard drive switch

[Horus]

I have a couple of fairly old HP and dell desktops up in the loft, and my niece needs a new PC.

 

the Dell HD is deader than a really dead thing, so can I just plug in the HP one?

 

I don't have any of the original disks with OS/Drivers on, but they both run Windows XP Home edition.

 

I'm not a complete PC thicko, but I'm not a techy nerd either.

 

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

[md1892]

It depends what operating system both machines have on them. Although to be honest you will probably have issues regardless, it also depends on the age of the machines involved.

[Uncle_Meat]

It'll work, but wether it'll boot up is a different matter.

 

If both machines have the same, or at least a similar chipset XP will start up, albeit with probable windows activation messages and a shitload of "found new hardware". Again, depending upon how close the hardware is between each old PC you may well have to go searching for drivers for the likes of sound, ethernet and video.

 

Best bet would be to wipe and reinstall anyway.

[Horus]

Cheers for the replies.

 

If I tried it and it didn't work, would I then be able to plug it back in to the old PC and just giver her the old HP one, and pretend nothing ever happened?

 

If it did work, but I needed new drivers and what have you, would I still be able to hook it up to the internet to sort this out?

 

If it did work, but I needed a fresh install of windows, would a moody copy of windows XP from a torrents site be OK?

 

 

Cheers again.