Can you swap an old HD into a new box and expect it to boot?

Here's my deal:

I bought a P4 2.4 ghz, 256 meg DDR400 RAM Dell with XP home real cheap off their site. I have an old P3 800mhz with XP pro and lots of software. Instead of having to start installing software, documents, etc. from scratch on the new box, I was hoping to just swap the physical drives and go on my happy way. Not so simple, apparantly, since my old HD in the new box seemed to make the new box unhappy. I got a "windows failed to boot properly" message with a bunch of other condolences and the option to start in various versions of safe mode (safe mode, ssafe with networking, etc) or in my old configuration. None of teh options worked and I wasn't able to do anythibg in set-up to make it boot either.

So, the question is: is there some nice clean way to introduce an existing drive with existing XP OS, applications, documents etc. in to a new box? Any suggestions? Thanks.

how bout this, make sure the new drive that came with the computer is set to master on the jumper, then set the slave on your old drive to slave, run both, when the computer boots up, either fix the boot record, or drop in your xp pro disk and do a repair or install, as long as you dont format you wont loose your stuff, and will have a dual boot. make sure to direct the install, repair to the new drive letter for repair or install and do not format.

Nice idea. I'll try it and let you know how it goes.

I hope you backed everything up to be on the save-side !

Windows XP won't boot unless the system drive(s) is(are) @ exact same addresses as they previously were.

That Reapair Install is potentially a great workarround though

I wonder if the repair won't just work without making my old HD the slave? That might be a more direct route since I also have an 80 gig HD I use for backup and file archives. I will most certainly back up the whole magilla.

yes the repair will set up up to run on the new computer, i have had xp boot in a different machine while doing a hd swap, but it is rare and usually has some kind of problems, the repair, or install seems to do the trick, some times the repair is a little hard to get started, the install will achive the same goal, DO NOT FORMAT or convert anyfile system while the install/repair is under way. back ups are a good idea, i assume everyone does that anyway, if possible. first rule of using windows, back up regularly.