Windows 7 hard drive.

[Michael_721]

So I have 2 hard drives with windows 7 both of them came straight out of working computers. When I tried to use them on my pc which previously had windows 10 running on it, the hard drives both go straight to windows recovery claiming an error. Both hard drives accomplish nothing when ran through recovery and neither will boot in safe mode. I've read this happens with windows 7 sometimes. Unfortunately I need the drive for the PC to run windows 7 as it is the preferred OS of the person I put it together for. They WILL NOT compromise and go with windows 10. Any help on getting these drives to boot?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Since those drives came from a different PC to the one you're using now, there is no way you can successfully boot in to the Windows 7 that's already on those drives. You must wipe Windows 7 off one of those drives, then install Windows 7 from scratch from installation media so that Windows 7 Setup can acquaint itself with the hardware on the PC which originally had Windows 10 installed.

Put simply, a pre-existing Windows 7 installation cannot be expected to boot successfully on different hardware, you have to install Windows 7 on the PC you want to use it on.

 

[Michael_721]

Sorry I know my response is late. Thanks, is this only with windows 7 I've taken Xp, vista, and 10 and it worked fine on multiple other computers. Windows 10 didn't even need to have it reactived on a different cpu and mobo. Anyways thanks for the heads up. I just don't understand why Microsoft would leave it like that.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Windows 10 can handle a motherboard change usually, but even then it's best to re-install to avoid any hiccups & glitches.

Older versions normally can't cope with a motherboard change, so if it worked for you in the past I'd say you were just lucky.

"I just don't understand why Microsoft would leave it like that"

Microsoft didn't "leave it like that", there are just so many different permutations of hardware in different systems you can't expect Microsoft to create an OS that's able to deal with every system on the planet without a re-install sometimes being necessary.

I always re-install the OS after changing the motherboard, I never even think about trying it any other way.
For starters, the old Windows installation contains a slew of incompatible drivers as well as a Registry with dozens of invalid keys and values. That's a recipe for endless glitches & errors further down the road even if you think you've got away with it for the first couple of days.