moving windows 7 HD to a newer computer

[frankbelson2]

I have a HD that has windows 7 installed. I have recently bought a 'newer' (still 5 years old but newer that my current (from 2003) computer. I would like to use the drive from the old computer in the 'newer' one. However, it will only boot till i see "starting windows" then it shuts down and reboots. I have tried to do a repair to no avail.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Frank

 

[DSzymborski]

Different PC means a fresh Windows install, especially on Windows versions before 10. Operating systems installs are not Lego that you can just move from PC-to-PC willy-nilly and while Windows 10 can be pretty decent at dealing with all the "wrong" hardware from the install, it can be quite problematic on older versions.

 

[frankbelson2]

DSzymborski, Thanks for the quick response. I knew that this would be the first response that I would get. Asked this question on another site and all i got was, it can't be done. I beg to different. In college (circa 1995-2003) I worked at the colleges computer lab. We would swap drives from 1 computer to the next when one died. More recently, my current computer (different from the one I'm asking about), a piece by piece build, (about 3 yrs old) was purchased without a new HD. I simply moved the HD to the newer machine (it had Windows Vista) and have had now problems to this day.
There has got to be another explanation. Anyone else have an idea!

 

[DSzymborski]

DSzymborski, Thanks for the quick response. I knew that this would be the first response that I would get. Asked this question on another site and all i got was, it can't be done. I beg to different. In college (circa 1995-2003) I worked at the colleges computer lab. We would swap drives from 1 computer to the next when one died. More recently, my current computer (different from the one I'm asking about), a piece by piece build, (about 3 yrs old) was purchased without a new HD. I simply moved the HD to the newer machine (it had Windows Vista) and have had now problems to this day.
There has got to be another explanation. Anyone else have an idea!

Now, how different was the hardware in your college's computer lab? From what I remember of college, the hardware in the lab tended to be fairly similar. It's highly unlikely you were swapping hard drives between PCs that were *9-10 years apart* in age (2003 and 2012/2013) with any high success rate.

I didn't say it can't be done. Sometimes you luck out, especially with Windows 10. But it's a cheap, lazy workaround and those have a way of biting you in the end. And once you do the old magic OS swapperoonie and you *do* have problems, the next step is almost *always* a full, fresh install.

Given that you've apparently gotten similar answers to this question elsewhere, I wish you the best of luck in your ongoing quest to have someone tell you exactly what you want to hear.

 

[13thmonkey]

it's a bit more complex than when you were a lab tech.

Investigate sysprep, you make a full system backup just for safety, you run sysprep, you move the HDD, you start the machine up, and it will treat it like a new machine and start looking for new hardware.

However: This will remove licensing for most of your software, and this is bending the use of this functionality, it may not work perfectly, I did it moving from a 775 platform to an i5-3 series, it seems to work ok, BUT there are oddities, USB3, doesn't work properly for instance, never been able to get round it (could be a mobo fault for all I know).

 

[steve8192]

Don't despair - there is an easy answer, although it'll cost you about $15 if you don't have the extra piece you need (or can't borrow it). Here we go:

0. Every modern operating system boots in the same basic way: Mac, PC, Linux, etc. The operating system kernel (the base layer) loads a couple of critical drivers, one of which is a driver for the hard-drive controller interface (SATA, SAS, whatever). When you move a hard drive to a new computer, there's a good chance that the driver needed isn't present, so Windows fails to boot on an "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" error, and typically reboots. In Linux, you get a "kernel panic, unable to mount root filesystem", and on a Mac you see what Apple wants you to see (which isn't much use). Solution: get the necessary driver in place -before- moving the hard drive to the new system.

1. Get your hands on an "offboard disk controller" card, where in your case it's probably a SATA controller. You want one that can be plugged into both systems, old and new, so if the new system has no older PCI slots (only PCI-E) then the disk controller must be a PCI-E slot device. This item can be acquired from many sources, like amazon.com, BestBuy, etc. Get el cheapo; it's just a tool.

2. Install the disk controller card in a slot in the old system. Boot up, and feed it the driver when Windows detects new hardware. (The driver should be on a CD that came with the card, if it's needed.) Make sure the new disk controller is working properly (check Device Manager under "Storage Controllers" to make sure there are no unidentified devices). Shut down, unplug the hard drive SATA cable from the motherboard, and plug it into a port on the SATA card. Boot back up. We need the system to boot with the hard drive attached to the card, which it should.

3. Assuming you booted from the drive attached to the SATA card, now shut down and remove both the hard drive and the SATA card. Install both in the new system, with the hard drive cable plugged into the SATA card as before (not the motherboard). Power up the new system - the system should boot, although it'll ask for all kinds of new hardware drivers. Cancel/skip the driver requests for now. Feed it drivers later - this is another couple of paragraphs in itself, which I'll skip because it's really a different topic.

4. At this point, if all went well, you've booted the old drive on the new system. Shut down again (sorry), remove the SATA controller card, and plug the hard drive cable into a SATA port on the motherboard. Boot up again. If you get here, you're pretty much done, except to the part about "loading a bunch of new drivers".

** This can be done without the SATA card, but it requires editing the registry manually, and if you do it wrong (which is easy), the drive will stop booting ALTOGETHER, and I'd hate to see that happen on my advice. The risk involved in this hardware shuffle is much less. "Can't boot" registry SNAFUs can be fixed, of course, but it's an even more ticklish process, so don't go there unless you're ready.

 

[USAFRet]

Moving a drive+OS to all new hardware is a 100% maybe.

Sometimes it works
Sometimes it fails completely.
Sometimes it works, but you find lingering issues later.

Now add in the apparent age of this install (several years old?), and that simply points to JUST REINSTALL IT.
All this faffing around with the registry or sysprep confers no guarantee of actually working, or you not screwing it up in the process.

A reinstall of Win 7 or later is EASY. And faster. And always works.


Oh, and you haven't even addressed the possible licensing/activation issues with a whole different motherboard.