Hi! all, does anybody know if oem win xp is only compatible with just ORIG. harddrive or weather it affects other pc components.  I.E./ I would like to try putting H.D.D into another pc (that is stuffed) to make a workable pc from both.  If it was loaded on one hard drive and you put that hard drive into another computer with different components you should not expect it to work. Some knowledgable people can SOMETIMES get this to work with some tweaks, but don't count on it.

A fresh format and reinstall is always best. The only reason people don't do this is they

a) don't understand why not to,

or

b) don't have a legal Windows CD, and don't want to buy onejordieh ...... As far as I know , the only differance between XP OEM and XP RETAIL ......is the licence fee .....and the level of support you can get from Microsoft .... It's all about dollars . The operating system is the same . The reason it may not work in another system is as GX1_Man has stated ......
If you have the XP disk and the product key code....set the boot ORDER to cd rom ...1st boot and put the disk in the cd-drive and reboot the machine XP will load from there .

dl65  If you're determined to MOVE the drive even at the risk of re-installing XP then only connect minimum hardware and start in safe mode on the 1st boot.

Then remove all the old computers devices from the Device Manager & re-boot letting XP auto detect and install the new hardware.

Then connect any extra hardware you have, boot up & LET XP auto detect and install that too.

Follow the reasoning?
FEEDBACK on this would be much appreciated.