A question for all you techies out there.

Scenario -

Laptop motherboard dies. I buy a new desktop system. Yank the old hard
drive out of the laptop. Buy a universal box with USB connector for the
drive, recover all the data. But....

I want to run programs off the old harddrive. I change boot-order and try
to boot off from it. My machine won't do it. It blue-screens, flashes an
error message too fast to read and then starts the desktop drive.

I would like to have the old hard drive to carry to work with me, boot off
from it, and have all my old programs and files. (I don't have a computer
at school - broke grad student- so I have to use the computer labs when I
go in) I suspect that windows doesn't recognize the current system
configuration so it wont load off the external drive.

There are a few programs on there I no longer have the disks for,
downloaded and they no longer exist, etc..A few are expensive circadian
physiology programs I traded downloads for salmon to the programers to
get. Any way to run those off the drive? Anyway to tell the program where
to look for the pieces windows has spread around the system?? If I boot
off the desktop it looks on this machine for all that shit. Not the
removable drive.

Any help would be apreciated.

7/15/2006 1:21:21 PM

you're SOL..

you'll need to reinstall windows in order for it to work with your new system. You may be able to erase the hardware profile (you'll have to google how to do that using the recovery cd) and be ok from that.. but I seriously doubt that'll work.

You should be able to get data off the drive.. but running applications (unless they run standalone and don't require installation) may not be possible.

7/15/2006 1:29:45 PM

the custom programs can still probalby be run off the drive wout actually booting to the os. You jsut have to find and run the executables.

You can reinstlal windows over the old drives install WITHOUT formatting and that might work 2. The real thing you need to run is sysprep, so it will redetect all your devices. Thing of windows as a brain, when you switch its body without notice its going to freka out.

7/15/2006 1:32:54 PM