Transfer of HDD

Hello.
I want to transfer my Windows 7 Hard Drive to this other PC desktop. When I booted up with the PC, the Windows 7 logo started to load and then stopped. It gave me the message stating it failed to load and if I wanted to reload or check for errors, something to that effect. So, I realized I can't boot into Windows 7 with a different system board that had used XP Pro. How would I change this so I can boot into Windows 7? If I reinstall, how do I go about that specifically? Some specs are below.

Windows 7 HDD: 500GB (I want to keep my files)
Windows XP Prof. HDD: 80GB (I plan on wiping this hd clean)
Memory: 4GB
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 HT 4+Ghz
Case is the same as predesser: HP (Compaq)

I may have forgot to mention one reason why I had transferred. I cannot boot into Windows 7 with my previous desktop. So, therefore I can't use sysprep for transferring to new system.

Is the Windows 7 installation on the 500 GB disk an OEM installation---did you buy a PC from a builder such as Compaq with Windows already installed? If so, it's an OEM license and would not be legit even if you could install it on another PC. You'd need to buy a new Windows 7.


If your Windows 7 installation is instead a retail version, you can install on another PC, but only on 1 PC at a time.

If you bought a new Windows disc, you'd just boot from it on the XP PC and wipe all partitions as part of the normal installation process.

It is not an OEM and I do not have a Windows 7 disk. It was an .iso file. I want to keep the files on the Hard Drive with Windows 7. Meanwhile, I can boot on the XP disk drive. Question will be how to transfer my Windows 7 files over if I reinstall from an installation disk?

Win7User2nd said:

It is not an OEM and I do not have a Windows 7 disk. It was an .iso file. I want to keep the files on the Hard Drive with Windows 7. Meanwhile, I can boot on the XP disk drive. Question will be how to transfer my Windows 7 files over if I reinstall from an installation disk?

I'm not quite following you.

If, as you say, you "reinstall from an installation disk", why would you want to "transfer my Windows files over" to a brand new installation?

It has my original files and settings from Windows 7. Similar to having a system image. I want to keep the same hard drive as well because it's has 500GB more than the other.

You might be able to put the Win 7 drive in the XP machine and do a repair install by using a standard Windows 7 installation disc, which you can make from a downloadable ISO. If the repair goes well, you would then activate with the Product Key that you already have. Windows 7 is supposed to be fairly tolerant of that, but I've never personally done it.

But that won't be a "reinstallation from an install disk".

I'd have very low expectations of being able to transfer "settings".

And you say "I can't boot into Windows 7 with my previous desktop". I assume you mean the Windows 7 desktop containing the hard drive you intend to put in the XP machine. There has to be a reason for that, which may mean you aren't going to get things running simply by moving the drive over.

I already have the Windows 7 hard drive in the XP machine. It won't boot into the 7 drive. I mentioned that earlier in my initial post.

As I understand it, you can't boot the Win 7 hard drive when it is connected to the original Win 7 motherboard or when it is connected to the XP motherboard in the other machine.

And you don't want to do a clean install because that might overwrite some files you don't want to lose.

I've never done it, but I'd think you are limited to a repair install unless you can get your hands on an app that will facilitate moving to new hardware. I think Paragon has an app for that, probably not a free app.

But if you can't boot that Win 7 hard drive now on any machine you own, you must have some other issue going on.

Yes, I can't boot to either system, but. The original system is a separate problem I'm not dealing with now. The original system is a hardware issue. It never gets to the POST or OS. Where the XP system has more memory, etc. and it gets past POST when starting windows 7 and then stops. That's what I mentioned earlier. I can also boot into XP drive.