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Switching the Hard drive of two similar laptops

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Aspire
  • Hard Drives
  • Windows 7
Last response: in Windows 7
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January 8, 2014 6:30:58 AM

Hi, so I have two laptops that are basically identical. One is the Acer Aspire One 756, and one is the Acer Aspire V5. Both are 11.6 inch screens, pretty much identical in hardware, 64 bit operating systems (except the aspire one is windows 7 premium and the V5 is windows 8).

I got the V5 because while I was on vacation the screen on my Aspire One cracked, and my parents thought it'd be better to just buy a new one for $300, than spend the $250 Best Buy was trying to charge us to fix the LCD of the original.

Well about a month into owning the V5, I realized that it sucked. I hated Windows 8 but couldn't figure out a simple way to downgrade. PLUS I continuously get this error, which eventually causes whatever web browser or program I'm using to spontaneously shut down. It's incredibly annoying and I have no idea what's causing it.


I feel like both of my issues with the V5 would be solved if I replaced it's hard drive with my old one. That way, I could get my old operating system back, and hopefully stop getting that annoying error. I still need some verification on this though. I don't want to make a hasty/dumb decision.

Is it as simple as just opening up the back of both laptops and switching the hard drives, since they both appear to be pretty much identical in hardware? Would my new laptop recognize the old hard drive instantly and start working like normal? Or would it be more complicated than that?

More about : switching hard drive similar laptops

a b D Laptop
a b $ Windows 7
January 8, 2014 6:57:37 AM

your going to have a lot of headaches just swapping harddrives. Since im not looking at them here are a few problems you may run into. Im guessing one is running a 2nd or 3rd gen cpu while the V5 is running a 4th gen cpu if the cpus are intel. If this is the case then stop right there you cant swap harddrives, you will run into major driver issues.


Some things that might help with the V5 running win 8 is installing Start 8 and modern mix from stardock.com I run both of them on my 8.1 and it acts and looks just like windows 7, and I never have to go to the stupid tile screen ever. also look at upgrading the ram in the laptop. looks like between low amounts and it sharing ram with the onboard graphics is causing you some issues.

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January 8, 2014 7:10:02 AM

faalin said:
your going to have a lot of headaches just swapping harddrives. Since im not looking at them here are a few problems you may run into. Im guessing one is running a 2nd or 3rd gen cpu while the V5 is running a 4th gen cpu if the cpus are intel. If this is the case then stop right there you cant swap harddrives, you will run into major driver issues.


Some things that might help with the V5 running win 8 is installing Start 8 and modern mix from stardock.com I run both of them on my 8.1 and it acts and looks just like windows 7, and I never have to go to the stupid tile screen ever. also look at upgrading the ram in the laptop. looks like between low amounts and it sharing ram with the onboard graphics is causing you some issues.



Yeah, the Aspire One is a Celeron 877 and the V5 is Celeron 1007U. I didn't know the CPU's affected the hard drives, dang that blows /:

I already have a program like that called "Classic Start Menu" & it works fine. But I still don't like the fact that Windows 8 is running in the background, taking up memory that would otherwise not be used if I still had Windows 7. And I actually upgraded the RAM of my V5 as soon as I got it, since the Aspire One had an upgrade ram stick of 4gb added to it's original 2gb, I just transferred it over to my V5 which originally had 4gb and now has 8gb.

So the V5 already has more memory than it was shipped with, yet for some reason it gets that error and I just don't understand why. It's really irritating and makes it practically unusable sometimes.

Another option I was considering is replacing the Aspire One's LCD with the LCD of my V5. I'm sure that would have less complications?
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a b D Laptop
a b $ Windows 7
January 8, 2014 7:39:16 AM

you cant swap the LCD unless they are the same model which is unlikely. you could buy a new one off eBay for around 70 bucks usually though. the license for 7 is tied to that laptop. if you swapped it it would deactivate and your license would be void.

windows 8 is better than 7 on the back end. it is not " running in the background, taking up memory that would otherwise not be used if I still had Windows 7". you should only get that message if you disabled the page file, but when it tells you that open task manager and find the process that's using all the memory and fix the problem.
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January 8, 2014 11:25:35 AM

unksol said:
you cant swap the LCD unless they are the same model which is unlikely. you could buy a new one off eBay for around 70 bucks usually though. the license for 7 is tied to that laptop. if you swapped it it would deactivate and your license would be void.

windows 8 is better than 7 on the back end. it is not " running in the background, taking up memory that would otherwise not be used if I still had Windows 7". you should only get that message if you disabled the page file, but when it tells you that open task manager and find the process that's using all the memory and fix the problem.

I didn't disable the page file and I do delete the process when I get the error. But the process is always my web browser which has like 3 tabs open max! What's the point of having a computer if I can't even use my web browser without an error coming up.

And what doesn't make sense is that sometimes I can use my web browser fine with like 10 tabs open & the error will be nowhere to be found, and my memory percentage in task manager is at a normal level, like 10-20% usage. But then randomly sometimes it'll spike to 99% for no apparent reason and the error will come up .I've run virus & spyware scans to no avail.
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a b D Laptop
a b $ Windows 7
January 8, 2014 12:00:02 PM

then your browse has some sort of memory leak or garbage plugin installed. disable all plugins and reset it to stock. or use a different browser. it has nothing to do with the OS
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