Re: Hasn't anyone installed a hard drive into multiple computers?
Before removing the hard drive from the old computer to put into the new computer,
start the old computer, click Start>Run, type: scanregw
|click OK|
When prompted, say Yes to backing up the Registry.
Next, uninstall any video card software and drivers, allowing Windows to change your
display adapter to Standard VGA 640x480, and reboot if prompted. Then uninstall any
audio software and drivers that will not be part of the new system.
Now restart the old computer in Safe Mode, open Device Manager, expand all
categories and start removing devices. Since all the devices in the next computer
different except for the hard drive, you pretty much need to remove everything
except the keyboard/mouse/monitor, including all the items in the System section,
the USB Controllers section, all other drives and controllers, display adapters,
audio controllers, modem, network adapter.
Then click OK to close, and turn OFF the computer. Remove the hard drive and
install in the new computer, then start in normal mode. Windows will begin
detecting hardware....when it finds the primary IDE controller and wants to reboot,
say no and let it find the secondary IDE controller too, then reboot at that prompt.
The next restart should find the rest of the hardware.
If removing the items in Safe Mode did not help, or the new system has problems, you
can restore the Registry from the backup that was made with scanreg, and try again.
An alternative to deleting individual items in Safe Mode Device Manager on the old
system, is to open the Registry Editor and delete the entire Enum key at this
location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum
Then, shutdown, move the hard drive to the new system, and follow the suggestions
above.
The Safe Mode method is usually safer.
As for the items that exist from even older systems where you did not use this
method for removal prior to taking the hard drive out, some of them may be removed
during this process, but some may remain and have to be manually removed.
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
"Ushnell" <Ushnell@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:900FB3BE-B78F-4A91-96F7-E65C3BBF1168@microsoft.com...
>I have done this without thinking of something until now and here's the
> story: I am someone that collects used computers and one thing that I've done
> is took a Windows Millennium edition containing hard drive out of a Dell and
> installed it into two other Dell computers and I am thinking of installing it
> in a Gateway computer.
>
> The problem here is that I'm asking myself: how do you remove the recent
> computer's features, settings and the device drivers information out of the
> registry?
>
> Please shed some light on this darkness anyone who has a any info on how I
> can fix this problem; I'll appreciate it very much. 