- Aug 20, 2018
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I've found myself in a slightly interesting situation here, through a combination of ignorance and bad luck I seem to have burned all my bridges when it comes to having a computer with a working copy of Windows.
I'm a student heading to college for Cyber Security this upcoming semester. As preparation I decided to get a more modern computer as my previous build was mostly over 8 years old except for the graphics card.
I built the old computer myself but hadn't done much since then except add a beefier graphics card, so most of my computer building skills were rusty and there is a lot I didn't know to begin with.
My school offers a discounted version of whatever modern Windows OS to its IT department students, so when buying parts, I didn't bother to purchase a fresh OS (though I do have a shiny SSD waiting for it when I get it). I'd been assured by my professor that she could get me a copy a few weeks into the school year. "No problem," I think. "I'll just use my old hard drive and OS until then, and in the meantime I can transfer my files over to a new HDD."
After stumbling through a few hardware problems (forgot to plug in power supply cords) I got the computer running, but now I find out the Windows on my old hard drive won't work when it's part of this new machine, what with its new motherboard and new pretty much everything, save a few things I gutted from its predecessor (power supply, graphics card, CD drive, useless hard drive).
So now, I'm up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Google searches lead me to believe that I won't be able to get the Windows on my old hard drive working though any means.
The reason I tell this story instead of just stating "I need to run old hard drive on new machine" is because my problem is uniquely temporary and the typical solution isn't really a good one.
Normally, the fix here would just be to buy a new copy of Windows and install it fresh on the SSD I already have. However, that is a massive waste of money because I'm going to get a copy of Windows with a huge student discount in less than a month. But I can't just wait, because I have to have a working computer for school, as two of my courses are online.
What can I do in the meantime to have a working computer during my first few weeks of classes?
Options I see so far include:
Here's my build in case it's somehow relevant:
I'm a student heading to college for Cyber Security this upcoming semester. As preparation I decided to get a more modern computer as my previous build was mostly over 8 years old except for the graphics card.
I built the old computer myself but hadn't done much since then except add a beefier graphics card, so most of my computer building skills were rusty and there is a lot I didn't know to begin with.
My school offers a discounted version of whatever modern Windows OS to its IT department students, so when buying parts, I didn't bother to purchase a fresh OS (though I do have a shiny SSD waiting for it when I get it). I'd been assured by my professor that she could get me a copy a few weeks into the school year. "No problem," I think. "I'll just use my old hard drive and OS until then, and in the meantime I can transfer my files over to a new HDD."
After stumbling through a few hardware problems (forgot to plug in power supply cords) I got the computer running, but now I find out the Windows on my old hard drive won't work when it's part of this new machine, what with its new motherboard and new pretty much everything, save a few things I gutted from its predecessor (power supply, graphics card, CD drive, useless hard drive).
So now, I'm up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Google searches lead me to believe that I won't be able to get the Windows on my old hard drive working though any means.
The reason I tell this story instead of just stating "I need to run old hard drive on new machine" is because my problem is uniquely temporary and the typical solution isn't really a good one.
Normally, the fix here would just be to buy a new copy of Windows and install it fresh on the SSD I already have. However, that is a massive waste of money because I'm going to get a copy of Windows with a huge student discount in less than a month. But I can't just wait, because I have to have a working computer for school, as two of my courses are online.
What can I do in the meantime to have a working computer during my first few weeks of classes?
Options I see so far include:
Take a ~$80 loss and just buy Windows.
Make a USB drive to boot Linux off of. I've never done anything like formatting a USB drive before, and I've never used Linux before, so this isn't very easy but it is free.
Remove the power source and graphics card from my fancy new computer and reassemble my old computer, then pray that it holds out another month. This would suck, but it is also free.
Find some miracle solution that lets me run my old version of Windows on a computer with pretty much entirely new hardware. If it helps, the copy of Windows I installed isn't from a prebuilt or anything.
Here's my build in case it's somehow relevant:
EVGA GeForce GTX 960 02G-P4-2966-KR 2GB SSC
GIGABYTE GA-AB350-GAMING 3 (rev. 1.0) AM4 AMD B350
AMD RYZEN 5 1500X 4-Core 3.5 GHz
Seagate (ST2000DM006) - Nothing installed
2TB Western Digital hard drive - Windows 7 Installed
Team T-Force Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200)
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