Hi, the Hard Drive in my current system isnt working proporly (I believe) the red indicator remains on permently. Also the drive is only a 120gb and 3 years old so i thought a new Hard Drive would be good. However the computer has Windows XP Upgrade - upgraded from 98 because the Upgrade was cheaper! Anyway I want to know how can I transfer XP and all the files to the new hard drive. I know I could copy every thing install xp again but that means installing all the programs etc. Also I am worried about the activation because ive had many problems with the PC and had to format it and activate it each time and i now theres a limit to how many times you can activate it (mate told me). I have previously tried to copy the files (forgot what they are called wba or wpa or something) but it didnt work before! Please help and sorry this is long! Mark Haynes AMD Athlon 64 3500+ sct 939 Gigabyte K8NXP-SlI Radeon X700pro 256mb 1GB Kingston value ram 3200 Audigy 2 ZS 200GB Maxtor SATA HDD DVD Rom

Go here for the wpa file explanation. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1151566,00.asp The new hdd should come with an install cd that will transfer the complete system over. http://computervitals.com/

You haven't made it clear to me whether the system is currently working with the old hard drive. If it IS, you can "clone" everything over to the new drive. Many new drives come with a basic clone program with them. Bear in mind that if there is some glitches/spyware, etc on your old drive, that will obviously show up on the new drive. If your new drive doesn't come with a clone program, now would be just an excellant time to invest in some backup software, like Norton Ghost. I use 2003, because it (Ghost) does not need activation for that version. YOu can find it cheap if you look around. Otherwise, follow above for saving your activation "save."

The above two posts will help only if your HD is working properly. i_XpUser

You can do as i have done before! Use Norton Ghost and create a backup. I do it on DVD because they are more capatious, however, you can do it to cd also. then all you have to do is boot to the first disk in the backup set you made and it will re-do your HD with everything as the old HD was. best of luck Frank :

ccfrank - did you read what haynzee wrote, specifically the Hard Drive in my current system isnt working proporly (I believe) the red indicator remains on permently. and my reply in the post just before yours? i_XpUser

XpUser is correct. If you drive isn't working correctly you cannot copy that system to a new drive and be certain it will work correctly (might get a bad read off the old drive). However, having the access light on all the time doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem with the drive. There could be a bad process or spyware or virus on your system that is constantly accessing the drive. In that case trying to move the OS to the new drive will accomplish nothing either. Your best bet is to install fresh. You should be able to start the installation with the XP CD and then you will be prompted during the install to insert the (* CD for verification purposes. Michael J