Replacing a broken HDD with a different OS HDD

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conloach

Reputable
Jun 4, 2014
5
0
4,510
My hard drive seems to be broken and will not boot. It's OS is windows XP. Would it be possible to take the hard drive out of my laptop and place it in the desktop? It's had windows 7 already downloaded on it. I've checked and all the ports are the same so it fits in fine. Just curious will it boot? If not what can I do to make it boot? I understand I will have to download new drivers.

I've tried to boot it and it comes up with an error but seems that it is compatible with the desktop as it begins to boot as it would on the laptop until it freezes and tries to reboot itself automatically.
 
Solution
B
While the drive itself will work in your desktop, the windows install will most likely not work at all. Now laptop drives are slower then desktop drives and you will notice a decrease in performance.

First off doing this is a violation of windows license agreements and in the eyes of the law (so microsoft's), this is the same as you installing a completley hacked and pirated copy of windows.

Most OEM windows installs are tied to the specific bios they put in their motherboards so depending upon the brands, if it sees a motherboard it does not recognize it might not even boot.

On top of all of that if you are going from AMD to Intel or vice versa the windows install will also not boot.

You are just going to have to buy a new hard...
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B

boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
14,846
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74,965
While the drive itself will work in your desktop, the windows install will most likely not work at all. Now laptop drives are slower then desktop drives and you will notice a decrease in performance.

First off doing this is a violation of windows license agreements and in the eyes of the law (so microsoft's), this is the same as you installing a completley hacked and pirated copy of windows.

Most OEM windows installs are tied to the specific bios they put in their motherboards so depending upon the brands, if it sees a motherboard it does not recognize it might not even boot.

On top of all of that if you are going from AMD to Intel or vice versa the windows install will also not boot.

You are just going to have to buy a new hard drive and reinstall XP on it. Buying an SSD drive would be even better, but to properly support an SSD drive you would need to buy a windows 7 license and install tht.
 
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Saberus

Distinguished
Aug 23, 2013
1,661
5
20,465
YOu've kinda answered your own question with the testing. If you're going to work at all, you need to load in the drivers for your desktop hardware. THis means optical drives, card readers, chipset, network, everything. If the hardware lacks Win7 drivers, you might be able to get by with the old XP drivers.

Mind you, the vast change in hardware will make Win 7 freak out and require reauthentication.
 
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