Win2k same drive new computer help

Factual Questions
1

Please help…

I have a windows 2000 computer that is about 5 years old and way too slow at this point. We have a computer that is 2 year old that we no longer need, so I switched the hard drives, but the Windows 2000 drive is not booting in the new computer…

It looks like it is starting fine, I get the windows 2000 screen… but after that I get a boot sector failure. (I don’t have the exact error message, but I can get it if needed)

the Drive still works fine in the old computer.

Am I missing something?

2

what kind of cpu do they have?

it’s been my experance a installation on a celeron system will not boot placed in an athlon system and vice versa. no reason this would not apply to other arcitechitures.

3

The old cpu is a Celeron, and the new one is a PIII.

Is there no way to boot it?

4

There’s a sub-comonpent in Windows called a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that is customized for the motherboard it’s initially installed on. If you have the wrong HAL, the first part of Win2K boots fine (the menu of OSes), but then it quits.

I’d bet that a Celeron and a PIII have different HALs. The other possiblity is the two machine have significantly different hard-drive controllers , so as soon as boot control transfers from the BIOS to the NTLDR it loses communication with the hard drive because an incompaticble controller driver is installed.

AFAIK, there’s no way to replace the HAL short of reinstaiing the OS. Now there are ways to do the reinstall without trashing all your data, but it will trash all your program installations. Try checking out the microsoft knowledge base for HAL to see what they have to say.

An alternative you might consider is installing the W2K drive as a secondary (D:) drive in the newer computer and booting it with its normal C: drive. That way at least you can use the data if not the programs.

That idea won’t work if you have the W2K drive formatted NTFS and the newer computer has Win98/WinME. AFAIK those OSes can only read FAT & FAT32 drives although there may be a driver or patch you can get to permit them to read NTFS drives. Not sure about XP home. I know XP Pro reads NTFS just fine.

Good Luck.

5

You could try putting the HD back into the old computer and then using the procedure from Microsoft Knowledge Base article 271965. This adds support for many different kinds of drive controllers. I have had some success when using it to move Win2K drives into other machines. You may still run into problems that other people have mentioned though.

6

I thought that win2k had an option to repair an installation. I think this will allow you to effectively re-install the OS without trashing your programs.

7

What I’ve generally done is:

  1. While on the original system, uninstall/disable all devices through the System Manager. DO NOT REBOOT OR RESTART

  2. Install (or try to) the HDD driver (IDE, serial ATA, whatever) for the target motherboard or controller card

  3. SHUT DOWN the system, then turn it off and transfer the HDD to the new system, with the mobo and Win2K CDs handy

  4. On the first boot-up in the new system, Windows should detect all the devices on the new system and ask for drivers.

I’ve found this usually avoids many problems down the line, not just the ones that crop up on the first boot. YMMV