I have Mandrake 8 (i think) :) installed on a P-400. Is it possible to take the hard disk and put it into another PC I have, AMD Athlon .. will it reconfigure or is it better to reinstall in the new machine... id like to keep the install. Pleaze help ! Im waiting to do it. I know it can be done in windows (sort of). But i do not want to start unscrewing yet.

This is one of the easiest jobs...move the drive and start the machine in single user mode. see your kernel messages. cat all required files in proc tree. if you have stock kernel (kernel with all options enabled) you shouldn't have any problems. edit your X driver in your Xfreeconfig. watch for changes in usb-drivers(uhci,echi). if this doesnot work without problems, write down what the system complains about interms of hardware resources. take the HD back to the original machine and compile a kernel with the new hardware enabled,and bring it back. oh - apart from Windows'98(and this depends on many things) other MS OSs don't move without problems. XP can be moved to certain extent as long as you have an OEM version, and two machines have the same BIOS(company). Even after that you will have to call MS, if you ever had to reinstall XP, to get a new activation code.

Ok Ill try it .... Thanx