Hard drive question

[whosuredaddy69]

I was wondering if i put my old hard drive in my new computer will it still have the same OS and data or will everything get erased?

[Lerxt]

You will still have your old OS on the drive - until you decide to format it.

Now, the question is "will it work?" - and that is a bit more complicated as typically, the O/S installed on the old HDD will discover that it's in a new computer and then it will ask you to get it reactivated (if it even boots at all).

You would probably have to run a Repair Windows Install using your O/S install CD, but it may still not work.

I was planning on doing this myself when I made my PC as I have an OEM version of XP - still haven't done it yet so I can't say what exactly will work. What I did do was create a VMWare virtual machine and have it run off a copy of my existing HDD installation (I have several drives, one of which is a copy of my boot disk) which can screw up your install, but I wanted to see what happens and basically XP asks you to reactivate - so then you need to contact MS to get a new key.