if i put my hard drive with windows installed into a different pc will it boot normally?

[masef21]

me and my brother bought the same HP pc about 3 years ago and recently the display on mine as broke and i cant do anything. i was thinking about just changing the hard drive in his pc with mine so i cant get some files i need. the PCs are exactly the same. would the hard drive with windows still boot properly?

 

[Hellfire13]

yes it will...u just have to set the boot priority correctly from bios...

 

[bailojustin]

Sorry to bring bad news, the poster above has been misinformed. You can take that hard drive and put it in another computer, it will not work correctly, will become extremely corrupt, and suffer massive issues.

Each hard drive has system files, these files and everything on the computer including the computers ability to recognize a hard drive through a sata port is controlled by a driver, yes native to windows 7, some are not (nvme).

All the drivers, chipset drivers, gpu drivers, sata controllers, engine managment, usb drivers, lan and wifi drivers and quite a few windows drivers will all fail catastrophically, the slight chance of downloading the drivers when booted through windows update, only to corrupt the system more with conflicting drivers.


Now, for the twist. You can put that hard drive in a computer and it will work flawlessly, ONLY IF the comouter is an exact mirror image of the one that was connected to the hard drive, same revisions on components, same pieces, cpu, clocks, and all.

I know this due to the fact I clone and assemble 30+ different rigs with very specific hard drive and hardware requirements.

 

[Hellfire13]

what u mean???
the drivers and OS are all saved in the hard drive, not anywhere else in the computer...whichever hdd is primary, the pc will boot from that drive...thats why u need to set the boot drive order in bios...the other drive will be secondary if attached...better not to...