Transferring Win7 off of one computer and onto another?

[imjouster]

So, I'm sure this has been asked before, but can't find any situations quite the same to mine. Buddy has a computer that is running very slow for his employee, has 2 gb or ram, core 2 duo at like 1.8 ghz, integrated graphics, etc. She's running windows 7 home premium on it currently. I believe it is an HP prebuilt machine. They have the disc for it and everything. Since I'm having troubles finding ram and CPU upgrades for that processor that aren't "used" I proposed to him to just build her a new PC for like 400 bucks. Now question is, would it be possible to pull all the "Data" off the current hard drive (just files, no .exe) and then format the hard drive, and then install that hard drive into the new computer, and load win 7 back onto that hard drive, and put the code back in that was used in the past? The other computer would be gotten rid of and parted out. I thought there was something about the license being able to be swapped from one computer to another. But I may be mistaken.

Thanks

On Edit: sorry just realized that there is a Win 7 forum here, This probably should have been posted there instead. If a mod could move it that would be great, unless it is answered in the meantime here.

 

[Vexillarius]

OEM licenses (like the ones on prebuilt PCs like this one) are tied to the motherboard and can't be transferred to another system.

You can transfer all the data of course, and even install Windows using your existing disk. You just won't be able to activate it with the old code. You'd need a new license for that.

 

[imjouster]

Ok that's what I was afraid of. Thank you very much.