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Can I simply swap hard drives?
MrMojoZ:
The repair issue and fix walkthrough:
http://windowssecrets.com/2007/09/27/03-Stealth-Windows-update-prevents-XP-repair
leapinlew:
And here are some Kittens:
ahofle:
FWIW, I've upgraded a motherboard/CPU and booted with the old HD with no problems either in XP. My thought was it wouldn't hurt to try seeing as how my alternative was to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything anyway. It ended up working, and I saved countless hours of reinstallation (OS and programs). I'm not saying it always works, but it doesn't hurt to try.
ahofle:
--- Quote from: More Cowbell on September 25, 2007, 05:54:51 pm ---
--- Quote from: unclet on September 25, 2007, 02:01:12 pm ---I did not read this whole thread, but wanted to mention that I always have two drives in my cabinets. The first hard drive (C:) is small and is used for the operating system only. The second hard drive (D:) is where all of the emulator stuff is installed. If I ever upgrade to a new computer (I did this twice so far), then I reformat the first hard drive (C:) and install the new operating system. After the computer comes up fine then simply plug in the second hard drive (D:) and the drive is recognized and all emulator stuff exists and is configured already.
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Actually, I like this idea a lot. I have a few small hard drives hanging around and this would make it easy to simply move a drive or copy it completely and set it up quickly and easily.
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Unfortunately, this only works with programs like MAME. Most programs install shared DLLs, OCXs, have tons of registry keys, etc. So you will still have to reinstall those programs. I would imagine most emulators would be fine though.
MrMojoZ:
If you really want to make sure your cabinet is covered get it setup like you want it then use a program like Ghost to image the drive. Plop that image on a bootable DVD and you can restore your cabinet PC anytime you feel like it.