I had seen a post a lil while back with someone that was wanting to move there HDD with XP installed from one PC to there new Rig. As Windows XP will not boot if you make a drastic hardware change you have to use the following method to move the HDD to its new home. I knew how to do this but I wanted to make absolutly sure so I contacted a good friend of mine who is the owner of a rather big Computer Repair Shop who confirmed this method to be a good way to make a HDD move with WinXp installed. I am posting this as advice to anyone needing to make such a move. This is simply one method of doing this and may not even be the best but it works and does not seem to have any adverse affects on the
performance of the Operating System.

To perform this method you WILL have to edit your registry if you do not feel comfortable in the Registry of your PC stop here.

This is a simple regedit to perform simply open regedit by clicking on Start > Run > type REGEDIT click ok
In regedit find this key :

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG > SYSTEM > CURRENTCONTROLSET > ENUM

You simply Delete the entire ENUM key close regedit and shutdown your PC right there and move it to you new Rig. Boot the system. When Windows begins to load it will start detecting your new hardware and build your new hardware profiles ( this may take more than one restart of the OS) I have provided a small screen shot of what key to delete for referance.
I hope this helps some of you.

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Thats pretty cool Twizted...now I can take my hdd around. w00t

Damn, that is spiffy, thanks for the info twizted.
I'm still wondering on my previous question of slapping a second hard drive from a secondary rig (of which both have XP...only difference is main comp having home and the other HD having Pro), whether or not it would boot, be able to access the other hard drive to transfer info, and then be able to put that HD back into it's previous comp (you know, set to slave and all that and back to master on it's original computer). But I found a better way...because I got a burner and this wonderful InCD thing that makes a CD-RW into portable memory.

Guess it could save money to use the same HD with new components (CPU/mobo)...I am so getting that ASUS A7N8X Deluxe and Athlon XP something...

You should have no problem reading the files from your other Rigs HDD as long as you slave it ... If you Mobo has a boot menu you can even boot it if you want. i.e. I can tap F8 while my PC is coming up and it will bring up a boot menu that I can use to choose any of my HDD or CD-Roms to boot from (slave or not) and if there is a Os installed it should be able to boot it.

Does XP rebuild that key when the HDD is in the new system? What i mean is, if I move it again, will I have to delete that key again? That rocks, thanks for the tip!

Does that work with motherboards too?

Quote: Originally posted by BZA What i mean is, if I move it again, will I have to delete that key again?

yep, good question. Everytime we move it, we have to delete it, correct?

But thanks for the tip, very very helpful!

Yes everytime you move your HDD you would have to delete the key and allow XP to rebuild the database.

Yes if you are changing your mobo in your rig you will more than likely have to do this as XP does not like Major hardware changes.

Danke, and I didn't even have to bump ya

Extremely useful tip, should be in a FAQ or summat...

If a mod or admin would like to put this into a review (me or them rewrite it with more pics) I would not have a problem with that (as long as I get mentioned ) Mainly glad I can help

Question will this work with Windows 2000 also?

It should work the same for any version of windows NT, 2000, XP although its not actually needed for 95, 95 and ME (in 98 I know from experiance moveing from PC to PC leaves alot of crap in the registry and under the enum key)... It may be located in a differant key but I really doubt it.. Should be in same place.. Let us know how it goes if you use this method on 2000.

I'm about to give this a shot with XP Pro while I swap out my mobo/cpu/ram. I'll let you know how it goes!

that info is so unbelieveably helpful, i just crapped my pants

That's awesome. I haven't a need for it yet, but I know it will come in handy some time. It should definitely be put into a review or article on here. Many people are probably wanting to know how to do this.

Tried it last night -- deleted the whole HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG > SYSTEM > CURRENTCONTROLSET > ENUM key, shut the computer right down, then swapped out the mb/cpu/ram, booted back up, all the hardware looked to be working, starting Windows, and... got a Windows blue screen about the hard drive being corrupt. "Please remove any new hard drives or hard drive controllers and restart". Oh well, was worth a shot.

I dont understand.. that should not have happened.... I will do this later tonight or tomorrow night and I will drag out the ol' digital camera and take snap shots as I go..

I haven't had time to play around with it yet, so I'm not ready to write it off as not having worked. It could be something totally unrelated, too. Hopefully I'll have a chance to work on it again soon; I'll keep you posted!

I should of read this earlier, I swapped mobo(kt400) to NForce and 2200xp to 2600xp and when I booted I kept getting BSOD, I forgot XP doesnt let you trae hardware, your saying my problem on why I gotta format now is becase of XP?

Ok please do and as soon as I reformat this 80 and set it up as my master and install I will put my current install (15gb drive) in another PC and I will take pics as I go along...

**EDIT**
And yes XP does not like any kind of major hardware changes...