Mum has an old Dell PC which has died, I suspect lightning may have done it.
The good news is the HDD is ok. I’ve put it into another PC as a secondary drive and I can see the files etc.

So I have an old PC which should do the job for mum nicely, obviously this is differnet hardware etc. Is there a simple way that I can put the HDD from the Dell into the replacement PC without too much dicking about?

Drivers etc will all be different. You’d still end up doing an install of the OS. Of course, you might be able to add the Dell HDD as a second drive and copy data across from there.

Nooo, the must be a way!

If the hardware is similar enough and the stars align it might work, but you really want to reinstall the OS from scratch. Doubly so if it’s XP era or older. You’re asking for trouble otherwise.

It is XP. Bugger.
Well the PC already has a HDD with XP (I know its EOL) on it. So what is the easiest way of getting all the files and programmes on it from the old drive? Reinstall from scratch?

If your old PC boots etc, dead simple, just plug drive from dead PC in and make sure it boots from the old drive- there should be a boot order option in the bios, if it causes any bother. The windows install on the drive from the PC won’t do anything, and the files will all be accessible. Then it’s pretty much up to you what you do next- copy files, kill the unused windows install, or just leave it all as is. You shouldn’t need to do any fannying about with windows.

I don’t know if this would work, but

Buy a cheap drive and install the os on it
Use your mums drive as a second drive
Save files somewhere and wipe the rest

I’ll probably just copy what I can across to the new drive in the replacement PC in that case then reinstall whatever need to go on there.

I’d keep a copy of the disk as a file and store it somewhere just in case, even if you use it to boot a vmware image. I always worry that there are some software serial numbers in there which I forgot to write down!

Programs will have to be re-installed.

Ninite (ninite.com) will make installing common programs easier.