Adding old HD to new computer

[jgblfans]

I have my SETA HD from my computer that the motherboard fried. I'm getting ready to buy a new computer and was wondering if when i add my old HD to the new computer, if there will be a conflict with the Operating systems from my old drive and the new computer. They are both windows 7 but I'm sure the version coming with the computer is not Windows 7 Ultimate, which is what is on my old HD.

 

[SNGX1275]

You can use it. Your Windows install may not like the big hardware change though.

 

[Zen]

I second what SNGX1275 has said, if it were me, just speaking for myself, I wouldn't feel to comfortable with installing a secondary hard drive into my system, that I knew had a Windows Operating System on it. If it were me, I would install the hard drive and the first order of business would be to "format" the hard drive, wipe it, this would then add to your data storage capabilities.

 

[DelJo63]

hmm; why not just mark it not bootable and/or step on the MBR?

 

[Zen]

hmm; why not just mark it not bootable and/or step on the MBR?

That would work, just mark the secondary hard drive as "non bootable", which now I guess would defuse the need to wipe the drive. A lot quicker way going about it like this, than installing a drive, and waiting for it to format all the way.

 

[jgblfans]

Thank you all

Thanks for the info. I think i'll just make it not bootable. I have too many programs on it that I don't want to have to reload.

 

[SNGX1275]

I actually misread your first post. I thought you were planning on just putting it in and booting from it.

But in the scheme of things here, what I said still is valid. If you do not boot from the drive you are taking from the old computer, you will not be able to run programs from it. Windows needs to have that information in the registry, if you aren't booting from it then Windows will just expect the registry information to be in the registry of the install you are running.

I don't think you can just copy the registry over. You might be able to boot the old install and extract specific parts of the registry and then load those in the new install, but I think it would be a time consuming and tedious process, and one likely to introduce further problems.

So, my advice, since you are getting another drive and another Windows install. Would be to try and boot off your old drive and just see if it works, I have heard of this working particularly well in Windows 7 compared to say XP. I would try to boot into safe mode originally, then go in and uninstall all (or nearly so) of your hardware from Device Manager. Then reboot and hope Windows detects it all again (otherwise you just have to go out and manually find/install drivers).