On 31/10/2015 22:54, Charlie Pridham wrote:

"Frank Booth" wrote in message

As far as your old machine goes any backup of data can be transferred
to any
machine.So first remove all external memory (cards, drives) reboot your
computer, then stick a flash drive into a USB port (at the back) and see
whether your computer can see that.

No it can't see any USB sticks.

I thought the drivers would be on the hard drive not in the BIOS?

They are but they are the drivers for that *particular* motherboard and
graphics card. If you transplant it without warning into another
hardware environment you will be very lucky if it boots at all.

What you would have to do is create a new bootable partition on a new
machine and reinstall Vista from your original CD/DVD and transplant the
activation code from the original machine I think the free version of
Recover Keys will be good enough for this although you might need the
paid for version.

The other option is to put the drive into an external drive caddy or
simply share it on a network and copy the important data off it.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown