I wanted to preserve all my programs and settings on an old XP system
and upgrade everything else to a new Quad Core system. There was
A thread dealing with this recently. Lots of negative opinion.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=563734

I thought it was worth a try.

Old system DELL Dimension 8300:
XP with SP2 had a SATA boot drive, a SATA data drive and an IDE data drive.
I had no XP disc or motherboard drivers etc. All I had was the little tag DELL
Puts on the case with the XP serial number. I needed this later.

New system Custom build
Q6600, P35-DS3L Gigabyte MoBo, SATA burner, 8500GT video card.

After research, I discovered a brilliant web page that shows in detail how to
Install the old drive into the new system. It worked for me.

This worked.

Basically you have use Device Manager on the old XP machine to delete
All devices that start with “INTEL” and update the IDE/ATA controller
To the STANDARD controller – shut down – install the old drive into the
New system, boot into safe mode, let windows rebuild the drivers, do
A regular boot, activate your windows (dial in if internet not working),
load the system drivers, video drivers etc. etc…this works!

So far I’m running very stable with render times equal to all those
Posted on the forum for Q6600.

I did several test runs on this by doing a clean install of an copy of XP
on my old machine using an old 80 gig IDE drive. That worked well
in the new system and I learned a few things by doing it. I was well
prepared for the final install.