[Failing Motherboard]Transplanting Windows 7 SSD to an identical lapt)

[SJLPHI]

Hello,

lately my laptop is having motherboard failures. Previously I learned that if I take an SSD with W7 from one laptop to another laptop, it doesn't work.

Right now, I don't have very much choice considering that I have no other computer, or access to W7 image(no flash drive, DVD, I do know that there is an iso image online, but I just cannot flash it).

I've asked someone to buy and ship an identical model of the laptop, and I can salvage the Linux side for sure, windows I need help with.

Please let me know if you have an idea on how I should approach this.

 

[Barman58]

99% of laptops come with Windows Pre-installed, and tied to the original system, so technically you will need to purchase a new copy of windows 7 or use the recovery system supplied with the laptop. You can also try to borrow, (or obtain), an OEM disk, (not a copy from any other manufacturer than the manufacturer of the laptop) and use the Windows Key affixed to the base of the laptop and then go to the manufacturer's site and hope that they have suitable drivers available for any specialist hardware.

The design of windows and windows software prevents the straight swapping of hard disks between systems, Even linux will be required to be re-installed

 

[SJLPHI]

In that case,
are you suggesting that this can only be done by fresh install, I cannot salvage the installation?

 

[Barman58]

Replacing a motherboard, (which is essentially what you are contemplating ), always requires a re-install and in addition it will normally also need a call to Microsoft to sort out the licensing, as the Motherboard ID, ( along with other hardware ID is used to tie the licence to the device.

There are some Paid Image cloning software that purport to be able to transfer an install between different hardware, but have not tried it so cannot recommend

Hopefully SIW2 will be able to help- as I believe he has more experience

 

[Megahertz07]

I was once on the same situation.
I had 2 identical laptops. The one I was using died and I tried to switch the HDD.
It worked without issues.

 

[SJLPHI]

how identical are you talking about?

Because when I tried it before, the laptop models were identical

 

[Megahertz07]

Same laptop but different brands and model. One was HP and the other Compaq.
Give it a try. Cant loose more than time.

 

[johnhoh]

I learned that if I take an SSD with W7 from one laptop to another laptop, it doesn't work.

This is a common misunderstanding. With windows 7, as long as it detects the generic hard disk controller at the first boot up after moving your hard drive to a new motherboard, it will get you to the desktop where you can then install the drivers needed for the new motherboard. Here's a tutorial how to do it. I've done this a dozen times, most recently from a six year old AMD machine to a new Intel machine.

How to replace Motherboard without Reinstalling Windows - wintips.org - Windows Tips How-tos

This is totally aside from licensing issues - you need to figure that part out on your own.

You will want to download all the drivers for the new motherboard onto the hard drive before your final shutdown on the old machine, so you can easily install them once you've booted up on the new one.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Interesting link only pciide was not set at 0 already it was set at 3 :/

 

[johnhoh]

Interesting link only pciide was not set at 0 already it was set at 3 :/

Most of us can ignore that pciide setting change since it only applies if you plan to set your disk in bios to IDE, whereas 95% of us will set it to AHCI, so AHCI is the only setting that matters.

Alternatively one can also make this same change within device manager by updating the IDE/ATA/ATAPI controller driver to "Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller" right before the final shutdown. Its the old motherboard's unique chipset hard drive controller driver that causes the BSOD when you move hard drives between motherboards.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Thanks all good to know my acer board is on limited life support time
Almost got a new last weekend but blew it off seeing the skylake x series chips are about to release thought I'd wait a bit longer

 

[SJLPHI]

The Scenario 1 in
How to replace Motherboard without Reinstalling Windows - wintips.org - Windows Tips How-tos

sounds happy and easy enough. I hope that works.

Transplant is scheduled for next week, I am planning for swap and go for both drives. If things go wrong, and I want to attempt scenario 2, I don't have a rescue media.

 

[SJLPHI]

Also,
"If you come in one of the above scenarios, then you will may realize that Windows cannot boot and crash with a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) error "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE". This is happen because Windows cannot find the correct drivers for the SATA hard disk controllers. To bypass this problem and to avoid to reinstall Windows, you must "tell" Windows using the Windows Registry, to use the Standard SATA Hard Disk Controller driver during startup. To accomplish this, just follow the steps below to make the appropriate modifications in Windows Registry and then Windows will boot up normally to Windows. After boot, they will install the necessary hard disk controller drivers according to BIOS hard disk SATA controller's mode settings e.g. IDE Compatible mode (aka Legacy or ATA Compatible) or AHCI or RAID mode."

has never been my case.

My case always involved the laptop attempting to boot, and "Window is trying to repair itself" and tries to repair it and fails and reboots. No BSOD. Even worse, with rescue disk, it didn't help.

I was transplanting from Lenovo T420 to T420 at the time.

 

[johnhoh]

My case always involved the laptop attempting to boot, and "Window is trying to repair itself" and tries to repair it and fails and reboots. No BSOD. Even worse, with rescue disk, it didn't help.
I was transplanting from Lenovo T420 to T420 at the time.

Just a guess but assuming you could not boot into safe mode either, then it sounds like it found the wrong drive controller driver, tried to install the right one but could not find it. But if you could boot into safe mode then the problem was probably with some other driver that was not present

 

[SJLPHI]

yes John, I could not boot into safe mode. Basically it was a lot of holding breath and headache.