Win 7 hard drive in another laptop bootup

[Iamnotageek]

Hi guys,

Wasn't sure where to post this.

Scenario:

Buying a brand new laptop for the boss. Hard drive from his old laptop which has Win 7 on plus all his data is lying here by me. Instead of backing up everything which will take forever, what are the chances that I...

1) Remove hard drive from new laptop
2) Insert old hard drive in new laptop
3) Bootup new laptop with old hard drive which has Win 7 on and all data

What are the chances this laptop will boot and work successfully with the old hard drive?

I know it'll complain about drivers or whatever when booting up, but it should work right? Win 7 was obviously installed on this hard drive in the old laptop so it'll have THAT motherboard's drivers etc, but if I recall correctly, it should work right?

 

[sajunky]

There is a chance, but you have to disable and Secure Boot and UEFI Boot (wording may be different) which win7 do not support. Sure, it will complain about drivers and Win7 will not update drivers properly, you will have to do it manually. A critical part is SATA drivers which are required for boot. Download driver-only package (without installator) from the Intel or AMD website (accordingly) and copy it to the USB stick in case Win7 is asking during the boot.

Licensing. If a new notebook is a different brand, you will have to inject appropriate OEM certificate to the installation matching SLP in BIOS. The new notebook must have downgrade rights to Win7, otherwise you will have to buy a new license from Microsoft.

Finally, you must be aware that due to the secret collaboration between Intel and Microsoft there are no Win7 drivers for CPU's above Skylake.

As you see, it is better do let your boss ask a technician to do this transformation.

 

[ponder]

No, don't be lazy and there's usually issues. Copying the data across does not take that long. Once you start the process it's handsfree and you can go drink beer.