old hard drive into a new one

[parminder]

when it comes to computer hardware i am on top of my game but this problem has got me thinking and wondering if you could help.

my dads company has this dell pc and got like p4 and 40gb drive. hes got this software which is installed by the company and they dont provide any disc or anything. ok now bought a pc for the company its a hp quad, 4gb, 500gb, 9800gt pc and what i was thinking is putting the old drive into the new one as not to loose any software installed and let it run on new pc. what i thought was it will load as normal but will automatically install the drivers 4 the new pc but instead it gives me a blue screen saying remove newly added harddrive or the raid controller. by the way i am using a pci ide card, tried two same thing. tried running in safe mode no luck. is there any way for it to work. other way i was thinkng is reinstalling xp but not formatting the drive just like an update but i no there is a probability the softwarre wont work thereafter. other way troed was running through vista as the pc came with it but its installed in a way in the old drive that it wont work in the new one., so i am jst asking any other way i can amke it work without altering the software.
thanks

[CoFree]

yea you cant do that.
there is a program call

acronis true image
it will let you clone over a hd to a different hd and it will boot up fine.
we use it at the shop all the time.

you should be able to set it as a slave boot the computer on the orig hd and the go into the slave hd for files and thing.

[parminder]

that is exactly what i was gonna do and use that clone drive and install like an update of xp or recover it somehow so the software is saved but again i dought the software is going to work but its a possibility, will check it out now.
thanks

[CoFree]

if you use that program or one like it.
all the programs and all should work just fine.