Swapping Harddrives

Hi Guys,

After downloading an microsoft updated, my bosses pc refuses to connect to the internet, it says it Can't find driver for the ethernet (on mobo). Now after a few times restoring and restarting, it gives it up and allows the internet again.

This has been going on for a month now - every other day and my boss has had enough, so he said he wants a new pc with all his old stuff on it. Which i thought fine, but i said to him we have a spare 4 month old one we could swap the hard drives over in.

Now my brain is a little slow but would there be a problem with me simply swapping the hard drives over and turning the pc's on?? Obviously i would need to reinstall some drives and things - but would this work??

I welcome your help.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on how many differences there are really between the two. I've had success in that a few reboots after the initial swap to get all the new drivers up to snuff was all it took. In other cases, it would just bsod all day long. If it's a like for like swap, it shouldn't be a problem.

Depends. Is this an AMD to AMD or Intel to Intel swap? What is the chipset it is on now..and moving to?

I have seen success swapping all kinds of things without a complete reinstall but it is not clean...

Well technically it would be a windows 7 to a windows 8 - both intel, both 4 gb ram 500gb - but the motherboard would be different.

What would the easiest way to get all the old stuff on to a new pc then?

Wait...what?

You're upgrading to Win8 as well? Just move the HW over, and boot to DVD to start the upgrade process then. No need to boot into Win7 first.

No im not upgrading one of the pcs is win 8 (the 4 month old spare one) the old one is win 7

But if i brought a completely new pc (no operating system) what would be the best way to get the all the data from the old pc to the new one

Again, what CHIPSET are your upgrading to? What CPU to to what CPU? What mobo to what mobo?

It is intel to intel chipset, intel i3 to intel i3 (not sure about mobo)

Make sure that, if you are able to migrate successfully, you uninstall and clean older drivers. Uninstall, then use ccleaner. That's the simplest method. Make sure you restart the computer and run ccleaner again on the registry and files to remove unlocked files/keys.

ztdesigninc said:

It is intel to intel chipset, intel i3 to intel i3 (not sure about mobo)

Click to expand...

Which chipset is my question? It shouldn't be an issue though.

Well we have gone with purchasing a new PC - so its gonna be an easy transfer. another pc to manage.