Hard drive questions???

[beastkiller914]

Im building a new computer and was wondering if i can move my old 1T hard drive to my new rig because it has windows 8 and all my files on it??????

 

[pcgaming98]

You can but you'll have to reinstall Windows. You should back up all of your important data.

 

[beastkiller914]

How do i re instal windows? Would i have to make a purchase??

 

[pcgaming98]

It's a chance that you'll have to. You can try to run it on the computer and it might ask you to reactivate your installation. You'll have to call Microsoft about this, and get them to activate it for you (or send you an activation code). If that doesn't work, you'll have to purchase a new CD of Windows (yeah, that's gonna be real expensive) Or a completely free alternative to Windows would be Linux. But you'll require a program called Wine to run all of your Windows based programs.

 

[spooky2th]

You can try a Sysprep of your HDD. Below works for windows 7 and probably is the same for win8. It's worth a try.

To do this, go to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe, check 'generalize', select 'OOBE' on drop down menu, and 'Shut down'.

When your new PC boots off of your old HDD, you'll get the 'out of box experience' screen, asking you to create new user account. Just call it anything and after that's done, you can log off and switch to your main user account.

Once you're logged in with your main account, you can safely proceed with deleting the newly made account in Control Panel > User Accounts applet

What sysprep does, it basicly gets rid of all platform specific data such as drivers and configuration files.

 

[Xcessbeast]

You can try a Sysprep of your HDD. Below works for windows 7 and probably is the same for win8. It's worth a try.

To do this, go to C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe, check 'generalize', select 'OOBE' on drop down menu, and 'Shut down'.

When your new PC boots off of your old HDD, you'll get the 'out of box experience' screen, asking you to create new user account. Just call it anything and after that's done, you can log off and switch to your main user account.

Once you're logged in with your main account, you can safely proceed with deleting the newly made account in Control Panel > User Accounts applet

What sysprep does, it basicly gets rid of all platform specific data such as drivers and configuration files.