Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
I've got two PC's, one desk top (running W8), one laptop (running W7). I'd like to swap the OS's over, can I just swap the hdd's over without any bother?
You may find that the desktop drive is a 5.25inch and the laptop is 3.5inch.
Otherwise probably not.
They both have the same (well similar) 2.5in ssd. Physically there is no problem. I'm wondering how the OS's are likely to react to completely new (except for the hdd) hardware.
You'll probably have to reactivate Windows on one or the other due to the major hardware changes. You're also going to hit potential licence issues in that preinstalled Windows will have a non-transferrable OEM licence. How much you care about that is down to yourself of course, but it might trip you up if it doesn't activate you online and you have to ring Microsoft to tell them about the new motherboard you've just fitted.
Software -should- be ok, but if the hard disk controllers are different chipsets, or if the CPU architecture changes (AMD <-> Intel) it might explode. Windows is a lot better than it used to be in XP days about transplants, but it's always a risk. I probably wouldn't chance it myself unless there was a really compelling reason to do so.
Fair comment about the licences. One would be OK, its a full non-OEM one. The laptop one would be slightly dubious I guess.
Both running intel, but gfx will be different. I guess is I create a backup, then if it doesn't work out I can always revert.
The laptop with W7 on it is a fresh install, might try that swap first and see how I get on. Before risking it with the more mature install of W8.
You might want to uninstall any third party graphics drivers first, revert it back to Microsoft bundled ones. If the HDD controllers are different manufacturers I'd be tempted to change the mode from AHCI to IDE on both machines and let it boot once too.
If it does hose, you might get it back with a repair install of Windows. Obviously, that's going to be a lot easier with the retail copy of W7. I really think the OEM install is going to give you headaches though; it's normally pre-activated based on a BIOS ID string, how it'll react when that string disappears I don't know. You might get away with blagging MS but I wouldn't like to put money on it.
Think I have a cunning plan...
Firstly I'm going to take the fresh W7 install from the lappy and just try it in the desk top see it it works. Currently it's just the OS, so worst case is a reinstall. If that works...
Step 2, trash the W7 install, take an image of the W8 onto the W7 drive. And then try the new W8 install in the lappy. If that works...
Step 3, install W7 over the W8 install.
What could possibly go wrong...
Back in my last job, we used to sing the It'll Never Work song. Crayzee ideas were met with "shall we sing the song together?"