Old hard drive with VISTA OS in new pc with NO OS will it work?

Question

... Will it work .. Ive read mixed reviews over it workin or not .. but none for VIsta which im on so thought id aask :D

Answer 1

It is not likely to work.  Windows licenses their operating system to the individual computer it is installed on and

differerent drivers are needed on the new computer.

If you get vista to boot and recognize your internet connection it may allow you to download the appropriate drivers and install them, and may work. You will not know

until you try.  Moreover, you will probably need to activate

windows.   If it lets you activate over the internet you are ok.

if not, you will need to may need to contact Microsoft and activate by phone.      The new PC needs to meet vista's

minimum hardware requirements.   Is it at least an 800 mhz

pentium III with a 128 mb memory card .    You probably meet the requirements if your "new PC" was manufactured in 2006, 2007 or 2008 but if the new PC was purchaced from a thrift store, manufactured in '99 forget it!!.

  I suspect not since any hard drive with vista is 2006 or later

and you called this hard drive "old" .     There are many

unknown factors determining whether it will work.

If you have a Vista DVD you will be better off simply reinstalling the operating system, it will be less time consuming.  

Answer 2

Probably not.  You would get something called Kernel Panic and you won't get passed the boot stage.

Windows looks at your HAL (Hardware Abstract Layer) settings and cannot find the installed hardware and therefore keels over.

Your copy of Windows is associated with a certain CPU serial number and the serial number on your other computer is going to be different.

Answer 3

Hi ben

first of all did your old hard drive come with vista pre-installed if so the drive will have been partitioned and the vista recovery files will be on one of the partitions for example  drives c  and d  c will be the main drive and d will have the recovery files.  you will also have a recovery disk

if you fit the old hard drive into a new pc it will not work you will need to format it and then reinstall the os and software.

When you format make sure you do not format the drive with the recovery files on it if you do you will not be able to use your recovery disk to install the os

Answer 4

The way I am reading your question is that you are thinking about taking an old hard drive with vista installed onto it and putting it into a new computer that has no operating system.

It could work.  The thing that matters is the chipset and ide controllers on the motherboards.  When windows is installed, it installs the appropriate drivers.  But if your new computer is VERY different, you won't be able to boot up and will need to reinstall windows.