Are you talking about just moving the drive with xp on it to the new machine and trying to boot to XP? I mean it would probably boot, but you would have a lot of issues till you installed drivers for everything.
Yep. Assuming his 19 year old PC power supply blows or motherboard dies but the hard drive survives, will I be able to just move it to another box?
All of this was kind of a happy accident. He turned on his PC that his business runs on (Auto repair shop) and it would not turn on for about 1/2 a day. Then it just did. He asked me to take a look and long story short, his vendor says that in February, they end support for the application his business depends upon. We would not have known so otherwise. So I'm telling him to migrate to something from this decade already! He has 2 to choose from. He gave me a gift cert to a brewery in thanks. Totally unnecessary but I will enjoy it!
Sucks, I've seen this before. Most of his database will convert to a new system. Name, invoice, car, vehicle ID. But not the notes he entered regarding work done. He's incredulous but I'm telling him, when I converted from one DNS server to another, IPs and DNS name traveled. Notes about what the thing was and where it lived. Gone.
I've left him with the old box and a brand new one I recommended running side by side and advise he make the db transfer than update manually his last year in notes.
I'll think kindly of him over a pint of IPA.