Windows 7 on a new hard drive?

aj4749

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Hello guys, I've recently purchased a Windows 7 upgrade, to use on my windows vista hard drive now, I believe its an OEM version as i bought it off software4students.co.uk, but it may be retail, that i am not sure of. Any who, I'm getting a new computer, and i thought rather than buy a whole new OS, why not use my legit version of vista on my old hard drive and update it to 7? What i plan to do, is put my hard drive into my new computer whilst it still has vista, I'm guessing its going to say it won't boot, so i put the windows 7 upgrade disk in, and restart my pc and then do a complete clean(custom) install of Windows 7 over vista. My question is will this work? If you need any info about the pc im getting, every component is changing, except for my cpu, that will remain the same. Also is there an easier way of doing this?

Thanks in advance
 
What you described should work just fine.

If, some day in the future your OS drive crashes and you need to re-install Windows 7, you don't have to install Vista first and then install the Windows 7 upgrade disk after - you can actuall install the upgrade kit onto a clean drive using one of the methods described here: http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

This is valid thing to do as long as you own the previous version and are no longer using it.
 

aj4749

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Thank you very much sminlal, this cleared alot up for me. Just in case of an emergency, I don't suppose you know any links for if my install wouldnt work or failed to install?
 

JessicaD

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Hello aj4749,

Before you get into this process make sure that your hardware is supported and software apps will work:

Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor for a more detailed understanding of whether your PC can run Windows 7.
http://tinyurl.com/no4xb7

Which version of Windows 7 did you purchase? Home? Ultimate? Student? Professional?

Thanks again,

John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Team