I have moved SQL 2000 to new hardware several times following various
'approved' procedures with success.
I have a customer who did the following and it seems to work (although very
minimal testing has been done):
1) SQL 2000 was installed to new machine from CD
2) stopped SQL services on new and old machine
3) COPIED \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server and all subfolders (all dbs
including master, model, tempdb, user dbs, etc)
4) shut down old machine
5) renamed new machine in Windows to same name as old machine and rebooted
6) used sp_dropserver and sp_addserver to rename SQL to same as old machine
This is basically what this article says to do:
http://vyaskn.tripod.com/moving_sql_server.htm
I winced at the thought of this. Has anyone ever used this method?