Need to transfer laptop hard drive to desktop, Possible?

[ToxiicHydra]

So I have my old computer sitting in my closet and my mother wants to get a better computer but the programs that she has she doesn't want to pay 300$ dollars for a program that she doesn't want upgraded. Is it possible for me to wipe my desktop hard drive and then some how transfer her laptop hard drive over and have everything. The old desktop was a pre-built btw. Her laptop is windows 7 and the computer is windows 8.1, will it transfer windows 7 to it aswell. Hope this explains my situation. Thanks.

 

[Zerk2012]

That's not going to happen.

 

[USAFRet]

Moving that laptop drive with the OS to a desktop is about a 99 to 1 against it actually working.
That's just the operation.

The Licensing will not work, full stop.

No matter how you do this, you will need to reinstall the OS and everything else.

What is this valuable $300 application?

 

[Solandri]

In my experience, transferring a HDD from one computer to another only results in a bootable system about 10% of the time. And even if it works, performance is usually bad to terrible, as Windows resorts to falling back to generic drivers for maximum compatibility.

The best you can do is convert the old computer into a virtual machine, then run that virtual machine on the new computer (64-bit OS and at least 8 GB RAM highly recommended). Instructions here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2480213/install-newly-built-computer.html#15048150