restore disks will they work on a new hard drive?

Question

im thinking of buying a new harddrive can anyone tell me if my restore disks i have from when i bought the computer new they have windows xp on them will they work on my new hard drive --we already bought a new notebook but my wife wants the old desktop to play her pogo games and sims games but the computer has doesnt have enough space on it for her 6 or 7 sims games lol --im confused with the sims anyway so i dont ask --and she wants a new hard drive bc of the viruses on the old one she wants to start new but doesnt want to buy another computer after we bought the notebook -----any ideas

Answer 1

Soudns like you have a plan.

Back up and files from the old hard drive, and yes, the Restore CD you have should work with the new hard drive.

Make sure that your BIOS is set to boot to CD ROM first, shut down, install the new HD, boot up to the Windows CD, and tell your wife to explain SIMS to you.....:)

Answer 2

one thing..if you buy a new hard drive then you are going to need to install winXP on there. But if you are going to use the old hard drive as a master and the new one as a slave then pop it right in and it should work like an usb flash drive. But you cant use the new one as a master and the old one as a slave unless you delete everything on the old one and install xp on the new one. But that is a long process.