So I have a 3 year old Dell E310 with XP MCE, with the Pentium 4 521 (2.8GHz,800FSB) and the motherboard is Dell Model 0JC474, which I guess can only be upgraded a little bit, to a 3.2 800FSB which I doubt would provide much improvement.

So the question is - if I buy a new PC with a new fancy schmancy processor, and I stick with XP, is it possible to simply install my current HDD into the new computer and retain all of my installed programs and settings? I have so many programs and custom settings it would take a lifetime to get a new PC to the same place.

Hi wantonsoup,
Welcome to Techspot. :wave:

Because you have configured your hardware to one PC then when you remove that hard drive and install it to a new PC more than likely it will fail to boot.
You could try but you must back everything up before the move.
If you had an external hard drive you could try making an image of that hard drive and then reinstalling windows on the new drive and then placing the image back. That may work. However again there may be some conflict.