Rather, will uninstalling my HD from device manager completely fuck my computer? or will it automatically be detected and reinstalled (like removing my DVD drive, XP will say 'new hardware found') running XP
Well first of all, is it the HDD that has Windows on it or do you have more than 1 drive? If you have more than 1 drive and want to uninstall the one that doesn't have Windows on it, go ahead- it will just re detect it and install it.
If it's the drive that has Windows on it, I don't think you can uninstall it but, I've never attempted it so I'm not positive.
If it is the HDD that has your OS, why do you want to uninstall it?
I would not suggest you do that, if it has the OS on it. It can't find new hardware if the program to find new hardware is on the drive you've removed.
Additionally, if it is moved to a different computer (the only reason I could see for removing the HD with the OS on it), it wouldn't necessarily have the drivers available to use the new computer.
If it isn't the drive with Windows on it, then you can just turn off your computer and pull out the drive.
Its not going to hurt anything windows is just going to reinstall the hardware as soon as the machine reboots. (it does require a reboot if you do it). Hard drives are usally auto detected if a drive is disconnected and you boot into windows it wont show up. Your not really going to accomplish anything by uninstalling your hard drive with the OS on it.
If the reason you are going through all of this is to move the drive to a new computer, you will need to use a utility from Microsoft called Sysprep and add the hard drive controllers for the new system(uninstalling them in device manager will not work). Sysprep basically removes all hardware from the system and readys your computer for creating a base image that can be deployed to multiple computers of diffrent manufactures. It can also be used to move your current XP install to a Diffrent motherboard if you know what your doing. PM me if this is what your trying to do and I will try and give you a basic overview of how to use sysprep.See post below. -TheSwmnCello
