Changing boot hard drive to a different computer

Backstory: My wife bought herself a laptop, so she doesn't need her desktop anymore. It has a faster processor than mine (3.6 as opposed to 3.0), but also has Win 8 while mine has Vista (yeah, I know, Vista sucks, but it works--and I have a sincere dislike of Win 8). Well, for purposes of faster streaming, I thought I'd just take her hard drive out of her old desktop and put mine in it. The physical swap was easy, and it gets to the "booting Windows" screen, but then loops back and starts over, then loops back and starts over, etc. Won't boot into Safe Mode either. Will boot into setup. Shows the first two hard drive slots empty and shows my hard drive as the third drive. Everything else looks fine, but it won't boot. I'm pretty sure this is a CMOS problem, but don't know what to do about it.
Any help appreciated.
Keith

 

Since your wife's desktop has/had Windows 8/8.1 installed, it means it's a newer machine that runs UEFI instead of BIOS. With this type of setup, the boot type is UEFI - Secure Boot Enabled which will only boot to the hard drive with Windows 8/8.1 installed.

To boot to the Vista drive, you're going to have to go back into UEFI setup and change the boot type to Legacy - Secure boot disabled and save the changes so it boots to Vista. It should then also boot to Safe Mode.

 

The problem is hardware mapping. The install was on a completely different motherboard, CPU, and that drive will not boot without a fresh install of the version of Windows you intend to use. The drivers for the entire system are in conflict as they are not for the system you are installing the drive in. Even if you do get it to boot, the OS will have to uninstall, and reinstall every basic driver if it can.

You cannot simply swap over a hard drive like that, unless the machines are either identical, or very close in design.

 

There may also be driver issues. Your wife's desktop has hardware that didn't exist when your old computer was built. You may be lacking Vista drivers for most if not all the hardware in her PC and it may not be able to boot even under legacy BIOS.

 

Her computer is actually not much newer than mine and came with Vista also. We installed Win8 after a destructive crash that left the computer almost inoperative. It would still boot from the CD, but we didn't have a CD of Vista. The reasons we installed Win8 were a: we didn't know what a pain it was, and b: our son had a free copy from his school and wasn't using it because his laptop is an Apple. My computer is Compaq SR2163WM and hers is a Compaq SR5000.
What if I install the Vista hard drive, then boot from a Win7 disk and install Win7?

 

The SR2163WM http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00838771
has 512MB of RAM. If you haven't added more RAM neither 7 nor 8 will install.
Before you attempt to install an operating system, always check the minimum requirements and be sure your computer meets them.

I can not give exact specs on the SR5000 because there are 75 models that start with SR500* followed by other letters.

You can't switch a hard drive from one computer to another if the hardware is different. You will create problems on the working hard drive then it will not work when put bacl into the other computer.

 

As noted above all the device drivers will be different. UEFI is also likely a factor, but also, it is most likely her old hard drive came with Windows preinstalled and was branded for her computer, not yours.

And since it is most likely that copy of Windows came preinstall on her PC, that means it is an "OEM" license and OEM licenses not legally transferable to a different computer under any circumstances. They are inextricably tied to the "O"riginal "E"quipment as per the terms of the license agreement. An agreement your wife agreed to abide by when she continued to use that computer the first time she fired it up. And that makes it legally binding.

So while you were able to physically swap the drive in easily, and even may be able to get it working properly, attempting to use that Windows on your computer is illegal. It is software theft!

So my advice is to either buy yourself a legal copy of Windows, or install one of the many capable versions of Linux, or stick with your copy of Vista.

 

I still have images of Digital River software handy.

If you need it, I can mail you a Vista DVD. You may need to install a few drivers via a USB stick, but it's a clean 64-bit image.

 

I'm not sure those computers can handle a 64 bit version. The first Compaq uses a Pentium 4 single core CPU.

Because not enough info was supplied on the other computer, I have no idea of the hardware specs.