Win 7 Hardware and software move

[woodgray]

Hi
I have a laptop that I did a fresh install of win 7 64 ultimate on. The video board died after some use. Its an Toshiba x205 sli3. CPU is t7500(gaming rig two video boards). The repair cost is 800.00 So on an older machine its not worth it.
I decided to build my own desktop. Which will cost me the same as the repair.
It is based on a i5-760.
Part of the cost savings was to salvage the old hard drive from the x205 and put it in the i5 system.
I want to do this without reinstalling a new Copy of the OS and reinstalling all the programs and data.

So the question is can I move the hard drive during build time and will the OS and drivers adapt themselves?

 

[hunter315]

Unlikely to work. The operating system on the laptop hard drive will be tied to the motherboard of that laptop since it was a prebuilt system, so you will quite likely need to reinstall a retail copy of windows 7, at which point its probably best just to get a new hard drive which will be a lot faster.

 

[WR2]

Hello woodgray;

Not without some manual intervention intervention.

How fast is that laptop drive? A slow boot/program HDD in a fast system might not be the best way to go forward.

 

[buzznut]

+1 Hunter best advice

 

[woodgray]

It is a win 7 full retail x64. Removed and replaced vista oem 32 build
Hard drive is Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB

 

[WR2]

Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB is worthy of being the boot HDD even in a fast desktop.
And with your full retail Win7 there is no issue with the license transferring to the new hardware.
I think you should be able to do a in-place upgrade, Windows 7 over Windows 7.
This will let you preserve your user accounts, data, programs, and update system drivers.
Let me see if i can find a how-to guide for that.

 

[WR2]

Here is a guide on how to slipsteam the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 into a bootable install DVD.
I think this is a good first step and Im planning on doing this myself this week.