Dork wrote:I used to use Drive Image to do what you're talking about but a problem started with XP - when you boot up on the second computer the OS recognizes it's on a different computer. It then tries to authenticate the copy. You can only authenticate a few times before it stops working.
With Windows 2000 or below it will work just fine. There may be some workaround but it may be cludgy. You'll also run into other problems if there are differences in hardware you aren't aware of - the specs and model number might be exact matches but if they were built in seperate batches there could be architecture differences which might cause really slow booting after a switch or instability.
How much stuff you do you need to be able to transfer between the computers? A USB drive and sync software might get you most of what you're looking for without disabling one machine if you forget to bring the drive with you.
Try this first.
when you are ready to move the hard drive to another machine go to Device Manager and uninstall the hard drive controllers. then shut down the computer and move the drive to the other computer. When the 2nd computer boots up windows will not know what HDD controllers it had before and will get them from the new motherboard. when the system finds the HDD controllers it should prompt you to reboot again. I have not tried this yet but have been told that it will work on xp. there is no risk of frying anything though. as always, and it should go without saying, back up your data first.
