Swapping hard drives on the same model laptops

[maximas]

Hello,

I have a Dell Latitude E5500 with a bad motherboard. So i was thinking of just buying a new E5500 off eBay cause they're cheap. My question is can i swap my hard drives From my old E5500 to the New one without having to format it? I have a lot of family photos i don't want to lose and programs i don't want to reinstall. Both hdd are Sata if it matters.

Thanks for your time.

C

 

[iceblitzed]

I had a similar issue to yours. I called tech support and they said you couldn't. However, I think there's a good chance it will.
Make sure to have a windows 7 recovery disk or usb (preferably) because boot up problems may happen. A simple repair should do the trick.

 

[jsmithepa]

The change of CPU serial# *may* compel Windows to adjudicate you are attempting to run the same Windows on 2 different machines, it refuses to activate, but it should pop up a message asking to call a phone#, if this happens, try it, the automated service will walk you through a lengthy activation sequence, at some point it asks you how many machines are you activating, and you say ONE, and hopefully after that, things goes peachy.

You can also follow Dell restore-to-factory procedure, but of course this will reset your OS and Apps.

 

[popatim]

You should be fine as long as they have the exact same hardware. Win7 only looks at the motherbd model#.
OEM's like to use the different hardware with in the same model# and differentiate them with a -xxxx number. So a Dell Inspiron 17r might be an intel build with one number but amd on another.

 

[maximas]

Just to update i got the new laptop and swapped the HDD and it booted up perfectly with no issues. Thanks for the help.

 

[popatim]

Thank you for the update