Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

Hello I need some advice. I have a windows 7 ultimate oem drive that I want to throw into a new computer. My msi z77 mpower board died last week. I've bought multiple replacement boards of the same model but all are DOA. My biggest concern with this system method is that I will lose my data. When I first got windows 7 I was dumb and ended up activating the root administrator account and install all my software on the administrator account to get around UAC warning and that annoying "can't run unless administrator" message. Also last year before my motherboard died I cloned the c drive from a mechanical drive to a ssd. Windows ran fine except for a few drive errors with my blueay player.

Well my board is dead, all my valuable software is installed on root administrator account and a lot of software is what I got for free in college. I am no longer in college but to get same software it would cost thousands of dollars. I also didn't get a change to uninstall my webcamsoftware. Am I royally screwed? Please help.

PaMil said:

Hello I need some advice. My biggest concern with this system method is that I will lose my data.

Hello! Not sure why you fear losing your data. You should always have at least one (preferably two) backups of your docs etc. (all your libraries etc.) BEFORE you attempt any kind of work like this. Since you cloned your drive you shouldn't have any problems with that (unless I'm missing something).
You haven't shared what your new computer is which has a lot to do with a successful system transfer.

Make sure you get yet another new drive for this transfer so you can leave your existing drive(s) as SOURCE and untouched.

Get yourself a USB drive 'toaster' (or similar) in case you need to copy your data to new drive after transfer is completed. If transfer works, you may not even need to do that. Since you have data backed up on two drives, losing your data shouldn't be a problem.

SIW2 said:

That has got nothing to do with windows 7.

Agreed !

Hi Guys,
I have a Sata ssd with existing windows 7 pro 64bit pulled from a dead laptop. Put it into another laptop (presario cq70) win7 tries to boot but just bsod's of course. I tried the regedit deadsystem replace 3's with 0's but that just changed the boot error to hal.dll system maybe missing or corrupt so i restored it back to as it was. My question is can i run sysprep while booted from a win7 64bit pro dvd in winre command prompt? The Sata ssd has a duelboot to win10 that works perfectly and the duel boot gives me Os choice ok. There are programs installed on the win7 partition i really need to keep. any help TIA.