Moving HDD with OS on.

[Green-Meanie]

Hey,
I im giving my pc to my brother but he wants to put his current HDD into the PC im giving him.
I was just wondering if their would be any problems that might occur and how to fix them and any helpful tips thanks.

Hes using Windows 7 home ed 32bit.

Thanks.

[watercooled]

You generally can't move on operating system to a different system without reinstalling. If it's a minor change like just a different CPU/GPU then you might be OK but if it's AMD-Intel or a different platform it most probably won't work because they need different drivers.

[chrestomanci]

As watercooled said, moving a windows install to another system will not work as the windows DRM will not allow it.

Perhaps the solution would be for your brother to mount his old HDD in your PC as a secondary drive, so that it boots from the original HDD and runs your old copy of windows. Your brother will be able to access his files from his old HDD (with a different drive letter).

You brother will have to re-install all his apps (and un-install any of yours that he does not want), which will be anything from a dull weekend task to a major pain, depending on how many apps he has, and if he still has all the install discs.

[watercooled]

Oh yeah I forgot about DRM - if it's an OEM copy you can't move it to another computer, and doing so violates the license terms. If it's a retail copy you'd probably have to phone them in order to re-activate it after making a major hardware change.

[Lourdes]

Acronis Plus Pack, Shadowprotect etc do hardware independent imaging and restores.