Swapping hard drives between laptops

[stringed]

I have used a Dell Studio 1745 laptop running Windows 7 Professional for almost 7 years. It is beginning to fail in small ways. Just lost wireless connectivity.

Before I have a more critical failure on this old 2009 Dell unit, I was wondering if its possible to swap out the healthy hard drive from it and installing it in my HP Pavilion g6 laptop running Windows 10.

As a general question, can hard drives be swapped out, bringing their OS and all data onto another machine with the assumption the new machine will operate with all the data and functionality transferred to the new laptop? That would save me inestimable time transferring all the files and installing programs one by one. Does anyone know whether the Toshiba HD in the Dell would work with the HP, or how to find out?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

If the notebook you want to transfer the hard drive from has the original OEM operating system installed by Dell, it is a violation of the Microsoft windows software licencing terms to do what you want to do.

You cannot transfer an OEM operating system from one PC to another.

https://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/licensing/sblicensing/Pages/transfer_oem_licenses.aspx#fbid=q7CEbN2...

[stringed]

I see. Yes, the OS on the old Dell laptop is OEM. Disappointing.

As another recourse, can you recommend a way I can migrate all files and settings from the old laptop Win7 to the HP running Win10? Either a WIndows utility or third party?

Thanks!

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.

I don't know of any software, etc., to accomplish that, but what I normally do is to go into my user account and copy all of those folders in there (Contacts, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Links, Music...) to a portable hard drive.

Then I plug that into the PC I want to install the files to, copy them, and let them overwrite the corresponding blank folders in my new user account.

As far as transferring e-mail (files, profiles etc), that I do not know how to do.

You would have to follow the directions online for how to transfer those files such as Outlook or Windows live Mail to the new PC.

Then you would have to reinstall all of the software you want to use on the new PC.