Bought a new pc and am having trouble

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I am putting together my own pc, I have never done it before but I thought I would have a go. Everything went fine apart from when I tried to use my hard drive from my old pc. I was told by a friend that my old hard drive is formatted with my old motherboard and I needed to buy a new hard drive and Windows XP software or the only way I could use my old hard drive is to format it again and lose everything on it. Is this true? If so, how do I format a new hard drive? I was told that when booting XP from CD with a new hard drive, it gives you the option of formatting the hard drive before loading the software from the disc
 
That is true apart from you don't need a new hard drive, your windows cd will be able to re-format or overwrite your old install. A format is a much better idea just in case you have any malware on the drive.
 
Yes your friend is correct. The old HDD still has all the previous motherboard drivers and the boot sector contains stuff that won't match your new machine.

You need to reformat it and install XP fresh. You also have the option of partitioning the drive at this time (make one or more partitions, like C:and D:)
 
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