New Hard Drive Install

[lward1]

Good Morning to all, and Happy New Years.:o

I have a couple of questions on installing a hard drive. I have been on the phone most of the night with my son who lives in another state. HDD failure, I talked him thru all the test's that I could think of, long story short is bad HDD.

1.My question is can I slave a hard drive to my test tower and install Windows XP?
2. Can I install the motherboard, chipset, video etc. drivers?
3. can I install all the critical updates and patches?

If that is possible will he be able to just install the HDD turn on activate his Windows and be able to use it?

Or should I send him a formatted HDD, and an image and talk him thru that?

Thanks for your input.
Les

[TimeCode]

There are a few issues here.
1) Don't slave the install drive because that will cause your son problems when he sets it to be the master. Set it to be the master originally.
2) You'll have a hard time fully installing the drivers if the hardware isn't there. And it could harm the process you are attempting on your own PC.
3) There are many drivers found and installed during the XP installation, They wouldn't be installed except for on an identical PC.

Recomendation: I would install XP as far as it wants to reboot. Once it automatically reboots, I would shut the PC down and uninstall the HD. Then send him the HD and XP CD and let him do the rest. I'm certain that he can do the updates and whatnot. :D

[Jory]

Microsoft has an article somewhere that explains a process to make a windows XP install transferable to a new computer. It's in my bookmarks, but that's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

If I'm not mistaken Acronis True Image Echo Server has an option called Universal Restore or something like that which will do what you want.

Assuming you can find the microsoft article I'd suggest sending a CD with the HD that contains his NIC driver and something like Single Click VNC. That way after he installs the drive all he has to do is start the computer, run a couple things from a CD, and then you can finish the install remotely.

[lward1]

Thanks for the input,
Thats what I figured, I just needed a second opinon. Since I'm the one that built the computer 3 years ago, I need to go to storage and find his MB/Chipset install cd and send him that, and a HDD.

I guess I could fire up N-Lite and slipstream all that together and send him that disk.

Thanks again,

Les