Moving windows 7 Hard Drive to new system?

Hello Geeks,

My mums computer has recently started to randomly cut out, sometimes 5 seconds after turning on, sometimes 10 mins. either way, when it does it can short out the whole house on the fuse box.
its an old PC, so probably the PSU is dead/dying (its about 6 years old).
She recently upgraded to windows 7 from XP, which is a clean install and a lot of faff because she uses picasa to organise photos and recognise faces and lots of things like this.
my sis has two computers atm, one is spare so my mum is stealing it

so my mums broken computer is windows 7, which was installed from a disc by her, not by HP or MESH or anyone like that so it shouldn't be hardware sensitive, and the new computer is already windows 7, but has a different processor and Mobo.
The new computer also has different graphics hardware to the broken computer, but if i move the drive from my mums computer and boot it on safe mode on the new machine then will windows be clever like it should be and find the new drivers and work?
Im trying to avoid another clean instal if possible...

Thanks

Rich

 

Should work just fine in safe mode, although you should always get the drivers from the manufacturer's website, I have had issues in the past with Windows Update drivers for mobo, LAN, video, etc.

 

You have a 50/50 shot in moving a hard drive like that. It is hardware senstive as it has to be to run correctly. But chances are if you move it, and then update the drivers that all have issues you should be ok for the mean time. Clean install is still the best option though.

 

One thing you need to remember is that moving your HDD to anther PC will invalidate the activation for W7 as it was activated on the first PC that is now broken.
You can contact Microsoft explaining the situation and they will issue a new activation code.

My personal choice would be to install the old HDD in the second PC as an extra drive which will give you access to all the data that is on it and you can just transfer what you need to working hard drive of the second PC thus eliminating the need for a new activation code.