Cloning OEM PATA XP to newer SATA machine via Sysprep 'Repair Install'

Hello All -- I have a problem that's been plaguing me for well over a year now.

Early last year I added a V4 128Gb SSD from Crucial to a 2006-vintage Sony laptop, which Crucial assured (indeed, guaranteed) would be compatible with my Sony VGN-FJ1S. This 'compatibility' is, however, only mechanical and electrical -- it fits the slot and boots up, but the performance is a joke -- rather than being 20x faster, as advertised, my system is now measurably 20x slower than it was with the IDE spinning HDD, seemingly due to the incompatibility of a SATA drive with a PATA port. A Google search of "Crucial V4", 'stutters' and 'pauses' will show that I am far from alone in this issue with their backwards-compatible SATA 1.5 SSDs for older machines.

To my understanding, and as a result of my researches, changing my current PATA disc controller to SATA is not possible without a fresh install -- which is not an option. A clean reinstall of XP or 'upgrade' to W7 are not possible as I have far too many small, professional and proprietary applications that are not W7 compatible. Moreover, there is no AHCI option in my BIOS and adding the Intel controller and restarting simply results in BSOD.

I cannot seem to find a compatible PATA SSD to match my IDE/PATA laptop, so I need to replace my laptop with a newer SATA one. However, the newer machine will be dual-core vs. my single-core which, along with the mobo differences, will mean a different HAL, which means that I'll have to sysprep (probably using Acronis True Image Plus) to get the old OS to boot on the newer laptop. I believe that IDE Emulation would need to be enabled in the BIOS first, or I could perhaps install the Intel AHCI driver in my OS before cloning and without restarting (which results in BSOD when I've tried to update to a SATA disc controller in my OS on my present laptop). However, my XP is an OEM licence, which I presume will fail when I try to activate it on a different Sony machine so, if I'm able to buy a secondhand laptop with an XP Home Product Key attached, can I still move a sypreped clone to it and activate with this new key and do a 'Repair Install' (which I believe will preserve all my system settings and programs)?

Note that this limitation: "To be able to post links or images your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts" means that the following paragraph cannot now illustrate my post:

Note that the 'preserving' MVF4D activation key described on this Micro$oft url (not allowed) makes no mention of XP Home but says (on a linked url: not allowed) that this applies to XP Home also). Somewhat less than clear...

If anyone can advise on this issue, from knowledge gained by experience, I would be much obliged; indeed, I'd be more than happy to hear that I've got this all wrong and that there's a simpler way to take an XP installation from a PATA machine to a different SATA machine without a fresh OS install whilst preserving all of my installed programs and settings...

All of this hassle, not to mention mention many months of lost productivity because Crucial choose to misrepresent their SSD compatibility in the name of profit.