My motherboard on my HP 510N fried and I NEEDED to replace it. I couldn't get the EXACT same MB without waiting a significant amount of time, so I got a refurbished HP d530 in the hopes the chipsets would be similar enough ... no such luck.

The new machine came with XP Pro installed, while my old drive has XP Home on it. I have setup the new machine with the new drive as a master and the old drive as a slave. I have downloaded the chipset drivers for the motherboard for the HP d530 and my question is, since I can't boot off of the old drive, is there a way for me to update the Chipset drivers on that drive so thatI can boot from it? I'd hate to have to re-install all of my software --- which is a considerable amount.

Thanks,
Dave  Just to comment, I know that no-one has an answer to this question ... as I found from HP it is basically impossible. HP Tattoos the motherboard, and during the OS Install some registry setting is created so that you can't port the HD over to another machine. I'm sure that they have a way to resolve it - but they weren't forthcoming.

Does anyone else here think that Tattooing a motherboard so that you can't use the HD to boot another machine is totally unacceptable? When I buy that machine, isn't the machine and all of its contents mine to do with as I choose (within the realm of legal uses of course)?

Yes that isn't fair, but it's life I'm afraid. The only thing I can suggest is reinstalling windows on your old harddrive set as a master.Just let me get this straight:
You have a pc with the old HDD in as slave
You put a new HDD in as master now it won't boot?

Your motherboard should boot the pc at least to bios screen with or without chipset drivers.
Chipset drivers only get used once windows begins to start, nothing to do with bios booting.

As far as HP saying thier mobo will only start from a specific HDD i think that's a load of rubbish.
If thats what they TOLD you  I think they are lying.
How would you ever possibly replace a dead HDD?
Or have i got your situation wrong?

When you boot you should get est on the screen from your bios then probably a no system disk error.
Is this what's happening?
if not, exactly what error message are you getting?

OK I just re-read your post , you want to boot from you old drive on a new mobo.......
Try booting from old drive as master but start in safe mode, (press f8 repeatedly  while booting) this will prevent most drivers from loading and might get you to your old desktop.

Failing that you might have to do a repair install on your old hdd under xp home, this will wipe a lot of your info and maybe my docs FOLDERS etc but it should leave you old programs intact, (with a BIT of luck).
But if you have no ogther choice there's not a lot you can do.

Can't you boot from the new hdd then access your programs, data etc??With a little preparation this would have been relatively painless but the horse is out of the barn now...
I would do a clean install of XP to the new HDD, use the Files and Settings wiz to set up the new HDD and then run your apps off of the slave (old XP ) drive.
A pain for sure but it will work.

patio.    8-)