*This is a work in progress. Please provide comments and updates to this guide. If you find something that was not covered or have a better way to perform a step, add it! Notice the notes and article links at the bottom…

Here is what we do:

  1. Boot to the source PC if possible. In Device Manager, change the IDE/SATA controller driver to a “Standard IDE Controller”. This only needs to be done for controllers that the boot drive is connected to. Additional RAID controllers can be ignored.
  2. If the source PC is an Intel based chipset, check to make sure there are no Intel services set to start automatically. Disable all Intel services or you will get a blue screen on the new machine.
  3. Clone the original drive to a new one. We prefer Ghost for simplicity. Acronis is good, too.
  4. Plug in the new drive to the destination PC and boot the machine. You should be able to go right into normal mode. If not, try safe mode and look for drivers or services that you can remove to get booted fully. If you cannot boot into either mode, a repair install is an option. This will take a bit more time, but will still save you from reinstalling all applications, etc.
  5. Installed the needed drivers for your new hardware and you are done. Often you will be required to Activate Windows.

This works about 80% of the time. One problem we haven’t been able to fix is with boards that already have a RAID array on-board and you want to move to a new system with a different RAID controller. It depends on the situation, but with a mirror (typically software), you can clone a single drive then recreate a mirror after the fact on the new system.

And lastly, before you spend 5 hours trying to get it to work, just reinstall Windows :)

*Check out this article for a thorough look at the process. There are several additional steps listed on how to modify the boot.ini with different HALs AND how to pre-install drivers for the new hardware.

*Here is a KB article I found at MS called: How to move a Windows installation to different hardware. It covers doing a backup of the source computer then a restore to new hardware AFTER a reinstall of Windows. More time consuming, but it may be worth a look.