Why can't i swap my hard drive into another PC?

Question

i apologise for my last question as it was a git vague!

Basicly, i want to swap my windows 7 hdd (that is in an older PC) and put it into a newer PC which has windows 8. (for the life of me, i cannot get on with it like the older OS!!)

anyways, i was successful to swap them and everything. but when i boo it up, all it does is go as far as the "load screen" (the windows logo before you log in) then it just restarts itself...


Anyone know what to do?

Thanks for reading

Answer 1

There are a couple of reasons why it won't work. Your new computer will have new hardware, chipset CPU etc and windows will be setup to expect the old hardware and will not have the necessary drivers and will crash as you have found. The only solution is a fresh install from your windows install disk



If your previous version was windows 7 OEM You will need a new windows 7 installation CD with a fresh key. If your previous version was windows 7 retail then you can download the same version from digital river and your existing key will work. This bring us to the other problem

For OEM versions Microsoft licensing only allows one installation on the 1st computer, basically windows lives and dies on that computer. So after you install windows on the new computer it checks for previous activations (via the Internet) and will not allow your previous activation key. No restriction exists with the retail version of Windows7 so that would be fine.

Hope this is clear

HTH

David



It is simple enough to make windows 8 look and feel like windows 7 just download "classic shell" (google it) and your old windows 7 desktop will return

Answer 2

Davids answer is most correct but the short version is thus, Windows installs certain drivers based on motherboard, cpu, and chipset to give base control of the computer. Moving the drive to a computer with different CPU/Chipset/Mobo might work but most likely will fail to boot as it is missing drivers. There is no way to get the drivers short of reinstalling windows

Answer 3

Have you selected your windows 7 HDD as the boot drive? if not go to your bios by pressing f2 on the boot screen and look for that, or try running the windows 7 HDD alone without the windows 8 one in there.