Hi Koala77,
Most HP computers if they are not to old have a system restore function. To start this, turn the computer off and disconnect any printers or external hard drives. You only need your mouse, keyboard and monitor to do this. Now hit the power button and turn it back on. As soon as you do this, start tapping the F11 key on your keyboard. This will start the built in system recovery. When the screen comes up, you need to click on "Advanced". If Advanced Options is selected, the system will perform a complete reformat and will destroy all user data. On Advanced Options, select the Windows System Restore option and click Next to begin the process. Then just follow the onscreen instructions.

Thank you for your reply rlj1959.

We have recently moved house, but I didn't want to take the old computer with me on the move.

What I did was remove the hard drive, and I tossed the old computer away.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply to this thread.

G'day Koala,
It's good you kept it. As you know I've had major computer problems and now on new computer the last couple of days and I'm going to take my old hard drive out today if I get time and transfer what I need onto my new one. That will save me having to buy or download them all over again. I just got some new device yesterday called an "Easy IDE", which should allow me to do that. xing fingers. lol

After I've done that I'm going to just buy a case for the drive and use it as external storage that I can plug into the laptop. You could do the same.

Hopefully this all works. Will let you know.

If the new case has room inside you can store the spares in it.
I built my own so I can store my old /extra hard drives right inside.


BUT--If you have a whole new computer...
I guess you'd have to wait until the warranty is expired as opening the case usually voids the warranty.


Seagate.com has a disk wizard program that can copy the whole system on the new drive - all workable just as it was on the old drive.

if you have some bugs or viruses this isn't want yo would use though.

Thanks Jo.

New computer for me, but it's my daughter's old one so no warranty left on that. How did you build the case to do that? Do you mean a tower?

I have a tower but I need to get the drive out of that and was just going to buy a $30 case that fits just the hard drive and that just would plug into laptop via usb.

I need to copy some of my files and a couple of programmes across that I haven't got on this setup but because I'm on a pre-paid wireless set up it costs me heaps per megabyte to download programmes off the net.

Otherwise this computer now is working great. I believe that 'easy ide' I mentioned allows me to choose what I want and then I'll wipe it clean and use for portable storage. The case I mean is not the tower, it's only as large as the actual hard drive itself.

Oh, yes- I meant case as in tower.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think you can copy actual programs from one windows installation to another. When you install a new program, it makes changes to the system registry and it also puts certain files into the applications folder and other folders in order for the program to work. You will probably have to reinstall the program all together. You could copy the registry key for the program if you can find it and put that in the registry on the other computer but you would have to copy all the other files associated with the program from all the different folders and place them in the same folders on the other computer. This would take a long time to complete and if you miss just one file, the program probably won't work.

Haven't had time to try that device yet, but what you've said makes total sense.

I will attempt to check it out soon.

It makes me a little nervous.

I shall read up about it on the net before I even plug it in.

thanks!

An external case for the hard drive with a wire that connects to USB will make the drive usable as an external drive, however 2 Terabyte external drives are now about $100. My choice! Have a 1 and a 2 now. Got them at Tiger Direct, the 2 is an ESATA interface drive, just as fast as internal.

The System Restore will probably not wipe the drive clean, it usually keeps the data intact, just removes programs.

A System Restore Copy program will make an exact copy of the drive which can be used to run the computer just like the original drive.