hi, (might be a silly question but.......) am buildimg a new rig and am going to use my present HDD which has WinME and my data on it. do i need to format that HDD, whip it outa the other PC and wack it in the new one for the new Mainboard to detect ?? OR, do i simply remove HDD (with WinME on it)from other PC and put it in the new rig. Hoping that first boot of the new system will land me in WinME Desktop ?? thanks rob

Your machine will detect the hard drive no matter what is (or isn't) on it. Has nothing to do with Windows You may be able to boot into Safe Mode without too much trouble, but the installed Windows drivers will be for the original machine, and almost certainly will not work in Normal Mode. Possibly you can futz around and 'repair' the installation - simplest would probably be to format and install Windows cleanly on the target machine Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid. -John Wayne

yep, was thinking along those lines.....back up Data onto CD disc, Format HDD on present PC, and install on new rig. Then boot up new rig first time.....hoping that new mainboard will auto detect HDD. i assume doing it this way, the new rig's mainboard would auto detect HDD, set cylinders and heads, THEN end up landing me with a DOS promt (????) from where i can then install WinME OS. ??

Well, you're not going to get anywhere at all if the hard drive doesn't get detected, now will you? WinME usually won't boot to a DOS prompt either (one of its more endearing features). Once the drive is formatted it will not boot - unless you use the 'system' parameter when formatting, but that isn't necessary You can format the drive in either machine once you've saved whatever from the disk, then install WinME in the usual fashion on the target machine, using a bootdisk or bootable CD. Here's something of a guide Bootdisks here Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid. -John Wayne