Gateway PC Upgrade?

[Wyoming]

My sister has a Gateway PC that I got for her off ebay. Previously she has only used it for wordprocessing and a little gaming (very old games mind, we're talking the old Theme series). She has always played The Sims but recently it has started crashing. I believe this to be because of a lack of RAM as she has started building bigger houses with more people and objects. However I'm not sure if this is the reason.

Her PC's specifications are:

Intel Pentium III 700MHz
Integrated 4MB graphics
128MB 133MHz SDRAM
10GB HDD with Gateway Windows ME

I'm about to upgrade my PC and as such I could put her HDD in my old PC which would have the following specifications:

AMD Duron 700MHz
Abit 128MB Radeon 9200SE
320MB 133MHz SDRAM

Would I be able to simply plug the HDD in? I have heard that Gateway PCs are very difficult to upgrade as the OEM copies of Windows they install have very little driver support.

So can could I upgrade her PC in this way?

Thanks in advance.

[Pirate Pete]

i thought you were not upgrading until november?

in my experience swapping a harddrive into different specification enviroments does not work

i think occainsionally it would work, but theres a higher chance it will not work

you'd do best to just reinstall say windows 98 on it after switching it into your current rig. You should be able to pick up Windows 98 pretty cheaply on ebay (i think, as long as the cd key is good?)

plus, 98 in my experience is tonnes better than ME , 2000 is even better

good luck

[Wyoming]

I'm not upgrading until November, but I'm preparing. I've done the same sort of thing before as I moved a hardrive from a second hand computer for my first build and that went perfectly (until the CPU blew but that's a different story). I just wondered if Gateway OS HDDs had any pecularities as I had heard of some and wanted to know what I could get away with.

[Xaneden]

Well, Gateway don't make the HDDs etc, so as far as that goes, I think you are possibley confusing the OEM side of things. As far as this transfer of hard drives is concerned: it may or may not work. However, to increase your chance of it successfully operating in the Gateway system, you should do the following:

1) Uninstall all drivers for PCI/AGP devices using a program like Driver Cleaner.
2) Remove all network settings, and uninstall device drivers.
3) Remove any programs which are dependent on settings which have been based on your configuration. For instance, if you had a startup program designed to work with a certain make/model of sound card, make sure it is either removed, or set to work with the sound card in your sister's PC.

The best thing you could do however, is to reinstall Windows ME using the OEM/Retail disk after you connect it to your sister's PC. However, I would (as Pete suggested) advise you to use 98.

If however, you cannot do this, you could always try making an 'image' of the current hard drive, and copy that to the new one. It would however require a piece of software you would need to pay for.

As for the driver side of things, Gateway's site should provide some, and your existing 98 drivers might work on the new ME HDD anyway. If they don't, or they aren't on the Gateway site, you could probably find them from a host of free driver sites.

Hope that helps.