Josh Vogler asks:
Is Windows only bootable on the machine the hard disk drive is physically in? Is it set up with drivers for only that motherboard and hardware, or will Windows recognize different hardware and load the appropriate drivers if I move the hard disk to a new machine and try and boot from the disk?
I’m assuming the answer is no, and I’ve always just copied my documents when I get a new computer and re-installed all software. I’m wondering if I can add the hard disk to my new computer and boot to it when needing the stuff on it…sort of like a dual boot although it would still be the same OS (Windows) and not a dual boot of different OS’s like Linux and Windows or something.
6 Answers -
venkatp16
June 26, 2012If it is of same hardware it will not be a problem at all, i did this so many times and doing it now also……. but if there is any change in hardware you can install them,winodws will work properly.
ha14
June 26, 2012depends on the license of windows
http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/licensing_faq.aspx
After an OEM software license has been installed on a PC, the license may not be installed on or transferred to another PC. However, the entire PC may be transferred to another end user along with the software license rights.
Yogesh Verma
June 26, 2012just go and give it a try
it might have a chance of failure
but it will be fun to know new things
ATM there will be no prob
Josh Vogler
June 26, 2012Well during the time this question was getting approved I decided to just try it. It worked on 1 machine, and totally ruined my day on another. The 2nd machine was an older machine, and for whatever reason renamed the boot partition drive letter to D: from C: making it not work anymore. All the disk management programs I tried wouldn’t let me rename it back since it was considered the primary active partition. So all the the data was there, but when booting…all registry entries point to C:\, but now it’s actually D:\ I hooked it up to 3 machines to try and rename it C:\, but since there was already a C: on all those machines it wasn’t available to rename.
CONCLUSION:
It does work with exactly the same hardware (tested, worked)
Some machines will rename drive letter since a C: already exists on their system making it no longer bootable since all references point to C:\, and you will have a problem renaming it back easily.
From what you described, it seems you connected your hard disk externally or at least there was 2 hard disk with an active primary partition (bootable) and forgot to set the right device order for booting.
If that is that is your case you had to use a free application: EASUSData Recovery Wizard Professional, access the external disk and start the application. You’ll be able to recover all of your data even if deleted! I happened to me the same thing! After the recovery process is over you may happen to not get access to the hard disk! It is only a matter of assigning its ownership to an administrative user account.
Thank you.
June 29, 2012not sure if this would work but have you tried hirens boot cd
July 2, 2012https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiren%27s_BootCD
Terry
June 29, 2012I have done this a lot in computer labs with many versions of Windows, When the hardware has been identical it works flawlessly, though you should change the license key to the correct one and may need to call Microsoft to get it re-authorized. When there were minor differences in hardware I was usually able to boot and change out the incorrect drivers for the correct ones. When there were major differences in hardware I experienced a significant percentage of screens of death even when booting in Safemode and then those installs of Windows would seldom be bootable once the drives were reinstalled in their original machine.
Given that you are trying to have access to your old system from your new one, I have accomplished this by using physical to virtual imaging software. VMWare has a good one. Then you can have a running virtual machine of your old computer that you can fire-up on your new computer at will.
Alternatively using standard imaging software to create an image of your old computer’s hard drive to an external drive can allow you to eliminate the risk of losing your functional install if you create the image before trying a physical move.
As a side note when calling Microsoft’s Licensing, the more polite I was with the representatives the less willing they were to help me.
Josh Vogler
June 30, 2012This was more of me being curious, than needing to actually boot from original hard disk. While it does work in some instances, I’m definitively going back to just copying the partition to an external drive, and making it available to the ‘new’ computer. With today’s transfer speeds, it just doesn’t take that long to copy a whole disk anyways.
you may like to check this
http://www.xxclone.com/
or for the sake of backups check this
July 2, 2012http://clonezilla.org/