Mooving HDD with OS to new system

[Paulie]

Done some reading on the forum and couldnt find anything specific on how to move hdd with os on new motherboard without reinstalling os

I know Slick has done it because he mentions it in one of the videos that he mooved an old hdd into several pc's.

 

I need to move this hdd because old motherboard died and cannot be fixed even after replacement of voltage regulators on it but the os cannot be reinstallced sicne there are some verry sensitive and hard to obtain programs installed on it. Also the hdd has some realocated sectors errors so its not worth reinstalling os on it. Just need to run a few programs of it .

 

The old motherboard was a MSi 945M3  (MS- 7267) Ver 3 witn intel pentium D CPU  and trying to move it to an asus M2n32WS PRO with AMD athlon 64 X2 

 

Does any1 have some specific steps to make this work?

 

The hdd is in the new system already and is curently acting as storage but the programs are unnusable since the system is running Ubuntu on its HDD.

[LogicalDrm]

There are few option. First would be just trying to boot into it. If you get BSOD then it clearly doesn't work. Other is to remove any drivers previous mobo needed and then doing repair installation or try to boot into OS just by that and installing new drivers. Third option would be running it with some sort of virtual enviroment.

 

I don't quite understand why bad sectors would prevent you installing new OS onto it anyway.

[Paulie]

There are few option. First would be just trying to boot into it. If you get BSOD then it clearly doesn't work. Other is to remove any drivers previous mobo needed and then doing repair installation or try to boot into OS just by that and installing new drivers. Third option would be running it with some sort of virtual enviroment.

 

I don't quite understand why bad sectors would prevent you installing new OS onto it anyway.

You didnt quite read carefully what i explained. Its not worth reinstalling the windows on that drive since its broken. The only reason i want to save the hdd is for the os and programs on it. Otherwise i would just buy a new hdd and install a fresh copy on that one.

 

The OS boots untill the first glimmer of windows logo and then it automaticly restarts. Its definetly the old drivers causing this but how can i remove them if i have no access to the old hardware . Theres that sysprep command but only works if you can still boot from old hardware

 

And ideeas dont help me as i have allot of them. I need ways to implement those ideeas , meaning i need advice on what programs to use , how to use them or whatever to get the os to boot on the new hardware.

 

 

*Edit* 

I used Hiren boot cd to fix hdd controler and it allowed me to  boot the Os on an older pc i had laying arround. But when trying to use Sysprep to reinitialize windows 7 it gives me a fatal error. Does it have to do with the fact that mooving the hdd to a new mobo i need to reactivate windows? 

 

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

[mooseducks86]

First off, I'm not sure if I understand exactly, but let me detail a scenario that has worked for me.

 

Windows fresh install in new system.

Applications and os on old harddrive (still intact)

I edited the old registry (I believed I copied entries) by loading it onto my new install http://www.alanhart.co.uk/archives/2011/01/31/access-registry-on-another-external-hard-drive/

I updated those registry entries with correct paths.

I did try copying the programs over, and re-edited the registry files, but some applications (expensive ones usually) have files in other directories, so you would have to google a particular application and see if it has required files in locations other than it's program folder. In the end I just found my license info and reinstalled the applications, it was more of a headache than anything. If you don't need them right away, tinker around, just backup (export) your registry first.

[Paulie]

I am keeping that option with reinstall as a backup . For now i want to initialize Sysprep and generalize so that windows loads with the default drivers and i can reinstall the drivers once on the new system.

 

Any clues? 

[mooseducks86]

Well this guide states it's only for bootable installations, but there may be an option when you boot from disc? http://www.pcworld.com/article/243190/how_to_repair_a_corrupt_windows_7_installation.html

 

If you do get this working, please post the answer, it's been awhile since I've tried to do something like this, and if there is an easier way with newer software or OS, I wouldn't jump so quickly to doing fresh installs.