Physically moving a hard drive from older iMac (c2d) to new iMac (i7)?

Question

Instead of my usual habit of using superduper to mirror my drive to a new computer, I just physically moved the hard drive from an older iMac to a new one. But... it now doesn't boot, getting stuck at the apple logo screen.

Since the hard drive that came with the new iMac works well, and my old drive works well when I return it to the older iMac, I conclude that there is some problem at the system/kernel level due to the different hardware. In the past I did similar things (e.g. starting a C2D machine from a Core Duo in target disk mode), so perhaps the change in architecture to the i5/i7 is too problematic?

The main point: do you know of any way to get the system to rebuild for itself the proper versions of the system components when booting? Are there certain directories that I can safely delete to make that happen?

Thanks

Answer 1

OS X hasn't been patched yet to include the drivers and modifications necessary for the newest machines. Once 10.6.5 comes out you could probably move disks between the machines no problem. But as it is, you can't until they update stuff.

Answer 2

I would try and reinstall the system on the old drive installed on the new iMac i7, using the installation disks that came with the i7 iMac. This should detect the drivers/etc. needed and make a bootable drive.