Keeping Windows 7 After Swapping HDD?
Feb 18, 2011
My friend bought a laptop with a dead hard drive, so she went on craigslist and bought a 250GB HD with windows 7 on it. The problem is the new HD was from a dell computer and her laptop is a Compaq. I know about the MB bios not being compatible and thats why the HD wont boot to windows(I'm NOT Computer Illiterate) I just need help with options. I want to know how to reformat the HD and keep windows 7 that is on it.One of the solutions I found was to download the windows 7 ISO and burn it to a DVD or a 4GB flash drive and install it that way... neither I nor my friend has a job so buying a legitimate windows 7 disk is a no go(*sigh*) and we don't have a DVD burner, so that option is a no go.
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May 21, 2009
I am writing this on a new build PC with Win 7 RC installed. The problem benig I installed a small spare HD, I have got so involved in learning Win 7 and liking what I'm seeing that I got it set up great but the HD is not the one I want to use.
My other internal HD of an other PC is much larger and the one I wish to use. I don't know how/the procedure in transferring my settings files, folders from the small to the larger HD.
I have every single folder, file, emails and so on backed up on an external HD, so once larger internal HD is up and running I could restore/transfer my files/folders/e-mails/favorites that way but what about settings.
The larger HD as yet does not have Win 7 RC installed and this will have to be done first. I do not wish to partion the larger HD yet.
There are possible several effective ways to transfer everything, settings and so on from the small to the large but need the procedure explained, simple works best with me.
Or would it simply be best to install Win 7 on big HD and then transfer/restore, files,folders and so from the external back up HD.
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Aug 31, 2010
I currently have a laptop running Windows 7 Pro 64 and a Desktop running Windows 7 Pro 32. What I would like to do is do a fresh install on both PC's but install the 64bit onto the Desktop and the 32bit onto the Laptop. I know the process is easy enough, but once both are installed properly, would I run into any issue during activation or any other issues? Would there be anything I need to do before hand? (not including backing up files and such).
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Feb 22, 2010
Well as everyone using Windows RC knows, it'll be shutting down every hour or so starting in a week or so.
I've been looking at two different options. First option was to use Ubuntu 9.1.0 though I have no experience with it. Thing is I game a little and wanted to run games also. I looked into using Wine yet its not always guaranteed.
Second option was to do a clean install of Windows 7 using an OEM copy for far less than retail. Also, thing is..I might be receiving a new computer from school and was wondering how it would work out if I installed the Windows 7 OEM to this hard drive then swapped it out to the new computer. I heard you cannot change anything once the OEM is installed without calling Microsoft. Would it be possible to swap out the hard drive and put it into my new machine?
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Dec 6, 2012
Two weeks ago my laptop harddrive (Toshiba - 500GB) started to fail, so I created a system image and tried replacing the HDD with a SSD (OWC - 240GB) after getting an error I figured out I needed to use a HDD that was 500GB+ even though my system image was only a 115 GB file. So I got a Seagate 500GB drive and restored it with no problems. However, I'd still like to use the SSD so I partitioned the new C: drive down to 150GB and tried to create an system image of just the C: & System. But I'm still getting this error when I try to recover the system image to the SSD. I'm following the exact steps that I used when I restored it to the Seagate HDD.
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Feb 13, 2009
I'm getting an eVGA e-GeForce GTX 285 soon, and I currently have a BFG GeForce 8800 GTX in my system. I usually uninstall the graphics driver I have installed, and then swap the card and install it's new driver. Is there any other "better" way, or is that pretty much the standard procedure?
Is a registry sweep recommended to get rid of any remaining driver components? Do you recommend any programs to do this?
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Dec 31, 2011
The hard drive in my friends Dell Inspiron 15R (M501R/M5010) needs to be replaced. I have access to an older HP pavillion hard drive with identical specs (SATA, 5400 rpm, 9.4mm/70mm, etc.). Before I spend a few hours taking apart the inspiron to get to the hard drive which is not easily accessible, I want to make sure the two hard drives are interchangeable, and that there won't be any HP vs. Dell compatibility issues.
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May 12, 2012
I have formatted my Acer Aspire 5552 and Installed Windows 7. Previously, my ''main drive'' was my Local Disk (D: ) (450GB) and now it is Local disk (C: ) (20 GB) So there is no room for my programs, etc.. so how I swap them around?Have tried to save the programs on Local Disk (D: ) , but then they do not work.
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Sep 13, 2012
We have a number of different laptops running Windows 7 and all have the same issue. The very first time a laptop is connected to the company network via Ethernet or WiFi (lets assume we have connected by WiFi) you receive the prompt to choose a network location. After selecting "work" the laptop can connect to the domain and everything works as expected.
Now if the WiFi on the laptop is switched off and the user try's to use the Ethernet connection the Ethernet adapter reports a "Unidentified Network". The only way to get the Ethernet adapter to discover the domain is to disable the WiFi adapter completely which our users cannot do as they do not have Admin permissions on our systems.
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Nov 21, 2012
How can I stop Windows from swapping the VirtualBox application's memory to disk when it's idle? It's a performance issue when my guest OS looks for data and it's not available - also since it makes use of its own sawp partition.
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Aug 17, 2012
My understanding has always been that if you swap out a motherboard, you need to re-install the OS with board-specific drivers because the existing drivers are no longer compatible with the new hardware.Or, another example is building a new PC and using the hard drive out of an older PC that was dying to avoid having to reinstall software.....is this possible?I've heard people say that you don't need a fresh install, which makes me wonder.
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Mar 6, 2012
Trying to figure out what is involved in changing hard drives in a new Atg 6420 laptop. Im guessing I need to create a ghost image of current HD, but not sure how to. Once that's done do you just install new HD and reinstall ghost. It doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.
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Sep 30, 2012
I have two 1TB drives, each containing 4 partitions, used for backing up 4 computers. These drives are regularly switched between buildings as part of our backup strategy, always having one off-site. I have assigned drive letters M,N,O,P to respective partitions. When I swap the drives, the drive letters get reset and have to be manually reassigned. assigning the drive letters, including USBDM, but get no results.
Computers: HP Compaq 8200 Elite - CMT - 1 x Core i5 2500 / 3.3 GHz - RAM 4 GB - SSD 1 x 160 GB - DVD�RW (�R DL) / DVD-RAM - HD Graphics 2000 - Gigabit Ethernet - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit - Intel vPro Technology Docking Stations: ICY DOCK MB877SK Hard Drives: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB
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Apr 30, 2011
I am thinking of buying a small ssd for a boot drive because they are so fast. However I want to keep all my data on my old hardrive because it will not fit on my new ssd. I was thinking if there was then a way of unistalling old windows from the old hardrive but keeping all the programs and data on it.
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Sep 12, 2011
I make my entire living on a computer but am not an IT person and really don't know enough about PC's. I recently fought with a computer to clean it up then finally reinstalled Windows 7. I am wondering of keeping two computers for business make sense. I use the same laptop in two locations at home. I do most of my work at a desk with a docking station and two monitors, I use it like a desktop at my main desk. When I fill orders I carry the computer and use it alone in a room I call my clean room. I do sometimes take the computer other places to work. I am thinking about getting two more docking stations and two more identical computers.
Two for work and one for non-work related activities. If I had a second computer that was maybe a week behind on being synched up I would have had no problems. Is there a easy way to keep to identical laptops synched up maybe 1 week apart from each other? I think it would make life much easier for me as I would have less downtime even with things on an external hard drive. I guess what I want to do is have two computers set up identically but synched up weekly as well as an external hard drive also synched up weekly.
I could keep one computer at my main desk, one in my clean room to process orders and if anything goes wrong the second computer could move back and forth until I am up and running again. I am thinking my non-work computer could be the same so I can also use the docking stations. Is this a good strategy to avoid downtime? Is synching up laptops a fast and easy thing to do? Will the synch up go both directions? I am worried about the both direction things. Lets say I put something on one computer and then later put something on the other computer and synch them up?
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Aug 28, 2010
I've just installed Windows 7 on my computer and now I'd like to get rid of Windows XP in its entirety but first I want to disable the boot choice and boot in Windows 7 by default. What are my options? Attached is my disk management.
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Aug 20, 2011
If I reinstall windows 7 and do a clean install, will it save all my documents and create a Windows.old folder?
These are very important documents, and I can't back them up, because the laptop crashed.
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Nov 16, 2012
I want to have a slide show of all my Windows 7 desktop backgrounds, changing every 5 minutes. I click on Select all, then save changes. Once the computer is on, this works well. But once I shut it down and reboot, the settings are lost and only one desktop background is displayed all the time. Is it supposed to work like this? How can I fix this? Windows 7 Ultimate.
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May 19, 2011
Alright, I have been looking for a program that will keep my open windows saved when I logoff or shutdown the computer so that when I turn it back on or log back on the windows will reappear...
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Aug 12, 2011
I have a problem as follows: After I restared my comp yesterday, win 7 loads up the blue-green screen with leafs, and right after that, hangs on the black screen with visible cursor.i'm only able to move it then. ctr+alt+del is not working.
What strange, in the safe mode all works well. I tried 'last known config' - didn't work. I tried system restore - same thing. I tried to repair system with the 'repair tool' from the cd - didn't recognize any problems.
My question - is it possible to re-place system files, or do un upgrade win 7 to win 7 but keeping all my programs installed? I really do not want to reinstall them, it would last 3 days.
In old xp, there was an option to hit 'r' on the second question while installing from cd, and we could have everything still installed, but system files replaced.
my system win 7 64 bit ult.
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Aug 5, 2011
It is my understanding that allowing the windows paging file to install on an SSD boot drive will cause the drive to wear out quickly. The recommendation seems to be to placing windows paging and perhaps other components on a mechanical hard drive while placing other parts of the Windows operating system on the SSD.
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Jan 1, 2010
I have all of my new PC parts in transit and have a copy of Windows 7 ready to be installed when I get it. Well in my current computer I have 3 internal HDD's. 1 for Windows and misc programs, 1 for Steam game installs and 1 for non steam game installs. Well Im wondering if I will be able to keep the software installed on the 2 gaming HDD's and just do a Windows clean install on the Windows HDD.
Any thoughts? Im leaning towards a resounding NO! But Im hoping for a YES!
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Feb 23, 2011
I have a Toshiba L645 which is on win7 but i'd like to downgrade to XP. The laptop has a hidden recovery partition which I would like to keep intact to restore at a future date.How can I downgrade to XP and not delete the recovery partition as it is on same HDD but hidden partition.
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Sep 15, 2010
I am signed up with the MSDN-AA program and have downloaded windows 7 professional, now I want to put it on my main PC which has the home premium.. Obviously you all know that the anytime upgrade doesn't work with these keys nor can you upgrade using the iso provided. My question is, Is there any way to get around doing a clean install? Any way to upgrade and keep all my files and settings and things without formatting the whole drive?
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Apr 1, 2012
My current Hdd which contains my OS and program data totals nearly 249GB, obviously SSD's which are this big are very, very expensive, how can I transfer my current OS install to a new SSD in an easy as possible way but keep the OS and the programs that are installed.Some of the stuff on there, like games, I guess I could uninstall and then reinstall them later so that they are no longer on the boot drive.
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Sep 12, 2012
Is there a possible way to switch Windows users while a game is maximized? I feel like I used to have a windows system that had a button on the keyboard that I would accidentally press from time to time, and it would send me directly to my windows users list while keeping my full-screen game active. I'm looking for that same functionality here.
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Feb 9, 2011
My wifes laptop will not keep the zip code set to our area in Chrome.This doesn't happen in Internet Explorer or anyplace else, only Chrome.Does anyone know of a cache file or something that I can delete to get it to accept our zip code?
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Jan 10, 2011
I'm trying to find out if there is a way we can prevent users from creating/storing/copying/pasting files onto the root directory. This is because i want to prevent anything from writing itself there other than the system itself. Because most of the autorun viruses etc copies itself there. There are numerous viruses out there which does this. And at this present time, although majority of the anti-viruses can track them, we might never know if another way to circumvent anti-viruses watch and defenses can be formulated. This is the basis i'm looking for this specific way to block users from storing files on root drives. And yes i am aware that natively UAC does watch over these places which means without elevated privs, nothing can be stored there. But what good is security if the home owners welcome thieves in disguises?
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Apr 29, 2012
I bought a new laptop 2 months ago (Tecra R840-16J)! I made a list with the specs I wanted for my new laptop (I have Toshiba laptops from 1997...still working)! The R840-16J had everything except an SSD!!! (and I could not custom make it here in portugal!).The Seagate Momentus 500 GB 7200 rpm installed (I just posted my performance results in the thread about HDD performance) have not that good performance and have a tremendous vibration (I can feel it all over the laptop).I'm thinking in a Samsung 830 512 GB SSD
1- would the performance increase?
2- I never had a fail with my HDDs (I have one 7 yr laptop that I use to my astrophotography capture sessions that run dozen of times in a very harsh environment and it is still fine!).What about the 830 ssd?
3- About energy: I allways hibernate my laptops! What the drain in energy in a laptop with a ssd when hibernated?
4- I have lots of sw installed (very specific for astronomy). I have Adobe Master Collection for example which is huge! Is it possible to install the new ssd and keeping all the stuff as it is now? I mean...maybe I clone all my HDD content with Ghost (that I bought but I think it will come with the 830..grhhhhh) and then transfer that for the new SSD, install ssd and all will work???? (or there is much more work to do and complications to do?)
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Nov 13, 2009
If my Win 7 machine goes to sleep and I try to wake it, it has forgotten how to find anything on the Internet until I do a restart, then all is well until sleepy time again.
Performance Information and Tools tells me that three nearly identical drivers are causing Windows to resume slowly. Don't know if that has any connection to the lost ability to connect.
These drivers are all named: Windows Driver Foundation-User-mode Driver/Framework Reflector and the only difference between the three is that one is a USB CF Reader, another a USB MS Reader, and the third is a USB SD Reader.
I have updates set to automatic and to include drivers. These drivers are all published by Microsoft, so I don't know why they aren't being updated.
I really don't care about the slightly slow part, I just don't like having to restart in order to log on the Web.
If anyone thinks these drivers might fix the lost Internet connection, please tell me how to update them.
By the way, I am connecting through a Linksys router. When I had Vista on this machine I had no such problems so I think something about Win 7 is not compatible with something in my 'puter. I tried to do a firmware update on the Linksys router, but never could get it done.
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Jul 15, 2009
I want to installing XP while keeping Windows 7's boot screen.
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