Can I replace win8 HD with Win7 Hd?

[frostburg49]

I have a new Win8 PC and it isn't doing too well. Will not set restore points, slower than molasses in the winter when opening browser, Windows (2) updates taking up to 1 Hour to download, etc., etc.

I have an older pc with Win7 installed and running well. Can I just pull the HD from the Win 7 pc and replace the Win 8 hd in the new PC? Would it work?

 

[Ztruker]

Even if it boots ok it will not activate. The OS is tied to the hardware for OEM versions preinstalled on a system.

Did it come with Windows 8 or Windows 8.1? If 8 then update to 8.1, that may help.

Fill out your System Specs so we know what hardware you have.

See here: How to See Your System Specs with "System Info"

 

[frostburg49]

I rehab old pcs and pass them on to seniors who can't afford one, so it's very hard to keep up with my 'system specs'. Right now I have 8 pcs (Win 95/WIN 98SE/ Ubuntu/XP/Win 7)on hand but am talking specifically about a new (Personal) Dell Inspiron 3000 win 8.1 OEM and an old rehabbed Lenovo Thinkcenter from about 2004 that was originally had an XP PRo OS. I bought a win 7 HP upgrade for the Lenovo, installed it to upgrade the XP PRo and have used it for a year or so. Thinking of stripping the Lenovo and moving the HD to replace the win 8 in the dell and holding on to that win 8 drive until Win 10 arrives at which time I'll ugrade to Win 10.

I have used the Lenovo win 7 HD as a test for win 8 beta.

I don't understand MS licensing but everything passes their activation process. My 'clients' usually don't care what the OS is as they don't go online but use them for typing letters and playing old games.

Question: would microsoft allow me to take the purchased win7 upgrade on the old HD and use it in the new PC as a win 7 installation?

 

[gregrocker]

It depends. You can always Adjust Win7 to boot on new hardware with Paragon Adaptive Restore CD

But newer PC's have UEFI BIOS' and Win8 specifically has Secure Boot. So if the hard drive doesn't have a UEFI install as evidenced by the presence of an EFI System partition in Disk Mgmt, then you'd need to enable CSM, Compatibility mode or Legacy BIOS and disable Secure Boot to have a chance for it to work.

Then if you can get it to boot, you'd need to reactivate with a Win7 retail Product Key at Control Panel>System. If it rejects the Upgrade key you'd need to do the quick Option 3 registry workaround at Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version.

This does not relieve one of the necessity of having a qualifying retail or factory OEM XP or Vista on hand though not being used to use Upgrade version, although this is on the honor system.

 

[whs]

I would fix Windows 8. It is a fast system - generally faster than Windows 7. You must have a specific problem. I would suggest a refresh. If you have already upgraded to Windows 8.1, you will have to do that again. If the PC came with Windows 8.1, you only have to reinstall some programs.

Refresh Windows 8

PS - look at this, here is someone that complains that Windows 8.1 is too fast.

Windows Boots Up Too Quickly

 

[Ztruker]

Every fix I see for this error includes removing all existing versions of ,NET then installing the latest, which you said you already did.

See here though: CLR ERROR 80004005

It says this:

Remove all versions of .Net Framework
Each version of .Net can be removed manually but in this example we will be using dotnetfx cleanup tool to automate the process. You can download it here.

Once that's done it says:

Rename the assembly folder
This is the important part. Browse to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET and rename the folder “assembly” to something different.
In this example I used “assembly2″.

Give that a try and see if it helps.