Can anyone help me please! I`m desparate!

[LagerLagerLager]

I`m posting here in the hope that someone can give me a quick fix. You`ve all done wonders before, so heres hoping you can do it again.

I`m trying to swap hard drives from one PC running Win2000 Pro to another. The one user wants the faster computer (the second one) but has massive amounts of data spread all over the place, making copying the data across a nightmare. In Win9x I thought you just swap the drives, detect the new hardware and presto! but ntdetect.com (I think) is stopping the boot process with an inaccesible_boot_Device error. It does start to boot, but fails at the hardware detection stage.

Heres hoping!

[JungleMan1]

Try running the system in safe mode, going into Device Manager, and deleting all devices. Then reboot normally, it should re-detect your hardware.

If that doesn't work, try just reinstalling 2k...but make the username different than the one the documents are stored in (E.g. my documents) otherwise it will overwrite the existing files the user has in Documents And Settings.

I am also considering doing the same thing. Thanks, in a way, for telling us that this may cause problems!

[Darren Wilson]

Place it back into the original machine it came out of. Go into Win2K, install the IDE Drivers for the NEW system whilst on the OLD system, then swap the drives back. If you can get into Safe Mode, then remove the old motherboard drivers.

[LagerLagerLager]

Thanks for the reply mate.

It won`t even go as far as safe mode.

As for reinstall, I thought about that, but I`m in deep hoopla if anything gets overwritten. Are you sure the documents and settings will stay? What about the profiles? It syas it will overwrite the entire WINNT folder.

[LagerLagerLager]

Well, it didn`t work. Windows craps out on me when I try to install the new IDE controller (AMD 756 chipset). And I`m just too darn scared to do the reinstall, coz he needs it yesterday and I don`t have time to ghost it first, so I aint takin the chance.

Thanks for trying anyway guys.

By the way, if he has an Asus board w/PIII 500 w/100mhz FSB, will the board take an 800 with 100 FSB?

[JungleMan1]

I don't have Norton Ghost, but is it possible to just back up the Documents/Settings and WINNT folder? Try that if you can...

Or just call him up and say that it's the only thing you can do and he'll have to either take a risk or wait a little longer if you can ghost the drive.