Getting New Win 7 Pro PC To Work With Old Home Premium Drive

I am a corporate PC tech having a rough time with a new PC.

My old PC, a Dell Studio with an MBR 1TB hard drive, partitioned in 2, running Home Premium crashed. I received a new PC with Win 7 Pro that only accepts GPT drives.

I have a load of apps that I cannot duplicate. Thus I have to update my old hard drive to use on my new PC.

The old hard drive is good and I can boot it to an Optiplex 990 at work. My plan is to back up my old hard drive to a spare drive, Windows Anytime to convert to Win Pro, convert drive to GPT.

First step stymies me. I want to make a complete backup of my old hard drive for safety’s sake. I am using Terabyte Image for Windows. I make an image of my hard drive and save it as a file in the old hard drive. I have a 2nd hard drive connected into the PC via a USB docking port. This drive is 3 TB. I know that MBR supports drives up to 2 TB but my original hard drive is 40% full. The BIOS in my Optiplex sees the 3TB drive as 800GB. Still ample room.

But when I try to boot the backup hard drive, now connected as SATA (not USB), I am told it is not bootable.

When I compare partitions of primary and secondary hard drives in Computer Management, they are similar except the OS partition on the original says Active, System and Boot, the OS partition in the secondary hard drive just says Active.

I try booting with a Home Premium DVD with the backup drive as SATA. It does not see a Windows installation and all efforts via Bootsect and Bootrec from the DVD fail.

How do I make the backup of my old hard drive bootable? I know that Windows does not boot off a USB drive, but could having the image being restored to a USB drive made it unbootable even when it is connected as a SATA drive when I boot? If so, I will try a restore to the backup drive when it is connected as a SATA. If not, how do I make that backup drive bootable?

Next step will be to do Windows Anytime Upgrade. I can connect via a special line at work (I cannot take Optiplex out of work). But I need to put in IP, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS servers. I see the DNS, I see the IP address. I do NOT see subnet mask or gateway. Is that feature available in Home Premium?

If not, what is my workaround? Do I buy a retail copy of Win 7 Professional? Will that allow me to upgrade the PC minus Internet?

Thank you in advance for your wisdom!!

Adelphi1 said:

I am a corporate PC tech having a rough time with a new PC.

My old PC, a Dell Studio with an MBR 1TB hard drive, partitioned in 2, running Home Premium crashed. I received a new PC with Win 7 Pro that only accepts GPT drives.

What does this mean, "only accepts GPT drives"?? Never heard such a concept.

What is the brand/model of your new PC? Are you talking about UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS in your new PC? There's nothing which prevents or allows GPT vs. MBR hard drives, to the best of my knowledge.

GPT simply allows more primary partitions than MBR does (which supports a max of 4 primary partitions). Also, GPT supports drives larger than 2GB, which MBR cannot. But aside from that, you can use an older 2GB (or smaller) MBR drive on any machine.

I have a load of apps that I cannot duplicate. Thus I have to update my old hard drive to use on my new PC.

Please provide details of the new machine, but I'd be more concerned about licensing problems wanting to use the original MS Windows on your old PC hard drive (probably OEM on your old PC, tying it for use on that one PC) on your new computer hardware. I would not think that is legal.

So I'm not sure your objective is possible, despite the issues with software products currently installed on your old hard drive and Windows environment in that old (dead??) PC.

You're right, software installed on the old Windows system on the old PC must be re-installed into the new Windows of the new PC, and that requires the installer files. You don't still have them, along with the relevant license keys?


So, before talking about any "migration plan" and details, can you please address my questions above.

Do you have OEM Windows license on the old and new PC, which is tied to that one physical machine? Or do you have retail Windows license, which allows you to use it on just one machine at a time, but you can use it again on a second machine as long as the first machine is dead?

You can try setting the BIOS on the new PC to CSM or Legacy BIOS, disable Secure Boot, which may allow you to start the old hard drive outright. If not then what always works is to Adjust Win7 to boot on new hardware with Paragon Adaptive Restore CD.

You can do this with the old hard drive or apply it's image to a new hard drive but that might create a new level of complication so I'd start with the old hard drive to test this.

Once it starts on the new PC, it will swap out all drivers in a cascade you can monitor from the animation in System Tray. Several reboots will be required. Then if necessary install the network adapter driver from the PC's SUpport Downloads webpage to get online, enable Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3), check for Updates, then install all rounds of Important and Optional Windows Updates. Only after all Updates are done should you import any drivers still missing in Device Manager.

If for any reason you don't see the drivers loading once the hard drive boots in new machine, then reboot the PC to force it to do so. If it won't start then confirm the Partition Marked Active to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times.

dsperber said:

Adelphi1 said:

I am a corporate PC tech having a rough time with a new PC.

My old PC, a Dell Studio with an MBR 1TB hard drive, partitioned in 2, running Home Premium crashed. I received a new PC with Win 7 Pro that only accepts GPT drives.

What does this mean, "only accepts GPT drives"?? Never heard such a concept.

When I tried to boot the new Dell Precision T5610 PC via legacy, hard drive would not boot. I have been told that legacy mode is far from perfect and will sometimes not boot legitimate bootable drives. I can boot the same old hard drive in an Optiplex 990. They are both different PCs than my original Studio 435/9000. Why would the older Optiplex (early 2011) boot the same drive in legacy mode that the T5610 can't?

What is the brand/model of your new PC? Are you talking about UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS in your new PC? There's nothing which prevents or allows GPT vs. MBR hard drives, to the best of my knowledge.

GPT simply allows more primary partitions than MBR does (which supports a max of 4 primary partitions). Also, GPT supports drives larger than 2GB, which MBR cannot. But aside from that, you can use an older 2GB (or smaller) MBR drive on any machine.

Understood and I appreciate the teaching. My data drive is 3 TB. Just out of curiosity, can I have the data drive as GPT and the boot disk in MBR in the same PC? Not really serious, but a weird thought I am taking about UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS.

I have a load of apps that I cannot duplicate. Thus I have to update my old hard drive to use on my new PC.

Please provide details of the new machine, but I'd be more concerned about licensing problems wanting to use the original MS Windows on your old PC hard drive (probably OEM on your old PC, tying it for use on that one PC) on your new computer hardware. I would not think that is legal.

So in today's world, if you have an older machine that dies, your only recourse on a new PC is to ditch all your old hard drives and reinstall everything? Even by Microsoft standards, that sounds very fishy. My old PC has a 25-character OEM license, I have that next to my keyboard as I type this. But I am also willing and prepared to get a new license to use the old hard drive.

So I'm not sure your objective is possible, despite the issues with software products currently installed on your old hard drive and Windows environment in that old (dead??) PC.

You're right, software installed on the old Windows system on the old PC must be re-installed into the new Windows of the new PC, and that requires the installer files. You don't still have them, along with the relevant license keys?


So, before talking about any "migration plan" and details, can you please address my questions above.

Do you have OEM Windows license on the old and new PC, which is tied to that one physical machine? Or do you have retail Windows license, which allows you to use it on just one machine at a time, but you can use it again on a second machine as long as the first machine is dead?

I have the old OEM license on both old and new PCs. In order to use my old hard drive on my new PC, I would gladly buy a retail Win7 Pro license.

Thank you for taking the time to help me. i hope I answered your questions to your satisfaction.

AddRAM said:

Can`t you disable secure boot and enable Legacy boot in the bios.

You simply disable UEFI.

And please change your font back to default ( If you mae a change ) so everyone can read it.

See my reply to Sperber. I have disabled UEFI, legacy does not boot the drive. Secure Boot was never enabled.

Thank you for helping. I will be more careful with fonts

GregRocker:

You can try setting the BIOS on the new PC to CSM or Legacy BIOS, disable Secure Boot, which may allow you to start the old hard drive outright. If not then what always works is to Adjust Win7 to boot on new hardware with Paragon Adaptive Restore CD.

That looks like a very interesting product. It seems suited for someone in my situation who needs to use an old hard drive on a new PC.

In my original post I wonder why I cannot copy my old hard drive and use a backup. I go back to the time where you copied your install floppies before installing anything. Is there software that can clone my bootable hard drive into another?

My main problem now is that my old hard drive does not boot in my new PC even in Legacy mode. Will your product help this? As noted in my replies, I will be happy to upgrade Win7 to avoid any license issues.

Adelphi1 said:

AddRAM said:

And please change your font back to default ( If you mae a change ) so everyone can read it.

I will be more careful with fonts

Almost there... no need to respond in bold.

Now, your new T5610 machine has Xeon processors in it. The Dell Precision T5610 Workstation offers one or two high-performance Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v2 options with up to 20 cores — 10 per processor. You say it came with Win7 Pro preinstalled on its hard drive. It probably also had dual processors, but you didn't say.

Your old Studio XPS 435 was running Win7 Home Premium. You need Win7 Pro to support the dual processors in your new machine. Home Premium does not support dual processors. Although it's a bit vague, I don't know if Home Premium can actually be used on a dual processor machine but will only use one of those processors, or if it can actually NOT BE USED on a machine if it has dual processors.

What is the message you get when you try to boot to the old hard drive, which you say doesn't work? Does Windows complain? Or is it a BIOS problem? Or what?? What is the symptom you describe as "cannot boot"?


So perhaps you can't boot to the hard drive on which Win7 Home Premium is installed while you have two processors installed in your new machine. I don't know if it's possible to just remove one CPU from the new machine and see if you can boot, but I don't think you'd want to operate that way forever.

Perhaps you might remove one CPU from the new machine, boot to the old hard drive, do an Anytime Upgrade (if allowed with your OEM license) to upgrade the installed Windows from Home Premium to Pro, and then reinstall the second CPU. I'm just thinking out loud... not knowing if this will really work. But perhaps it might.

On the other hand, the OEM licenses you have don't allow running on another PC. I don't know that you can simply re-license your OEM edition on a new machine even if you buy a retail copy of Win7 Pro, and it might be necessary to actually do a fresh reinstall (which of course you don't want to do, since you have your old software installed in that old Home Premium that you don't want to lose, and for some reason you don't have the original installers and license keys for those apps).

Perhaps somebody else who knows about this licensing issue can help out. But for sure, you won't be able to run Home Premium at all if there are two Xeon processors in your new machine. You certainly need Pro to run Win7 on that machine while both CPU's are installed if you want to use both CPU's.


From the MS Windows 7 System Requirements:

PCs with multi-core processors:
Windows 7 was designed to work with today's multi-core processors. All 32-bit versions of Windows 7 can support up to 32 processor cores, while 64‑bit versions can support up to 256 processor cores.

PCs with multiple processors (CPUs):
Commercial servers, workstations, and other high-end PCs may have more than one physical processor. Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate allow for two physical processors, providing the best performance on these computers. Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium will recognize only one physical processor.

I can boot the same old hard drive in an Optiplex 990. They are both different PCs than my original Studio 435/9000. Why would the older Optiplex (early 2011) boot the same drive in legacy mode that the T5610 can't?

The old Optiplex 990 is a single CPU machine. That's why you can use Win7 Home Premium on it.

How about booting to your old drive in that Optiplex machine, do an Anytime Upgrade to Win7 Pro (assuming that's allowed), and then put the newly upgraded Win7 Pro hard drive into the new T5610.

I'm still not sure about the licensing issues, since you have OEM versions and not retail versions of Windows. But this last idea could work.

There may be other BIOS settings that need adjusting. Look on all BIOS setup tabs for settings for Secure Boot, UEFI, CSM, LEgacy BIOS, BIOS Boot priority order. Post back camera snaps of these with settings choices expanded so we see all options. Attach picture files using paper clip in reply box.

To clone or image I'd use Macrium Imaging - Windows 7 Help Forums but the hard drive should be able to boot in CSM or Legacy Mode with Secure Boot disabled, after adjusting with PAR disk.

Windows 7 system requirements - Windows Help... Commercial servers, workstations, and other high-end PCs may have more than one physical processor. Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate allow for two physical processors, providing the best performance on these computers. Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium will recognize only one physical processor.

That seems to say that Win Home premium will boot on a dual processor PC, it just won't use the 2nd processor. Yet other documentation takes the opposite viewpoint