A friend has a 5 or 6 year old Vista machine with reasonable low-end hardware (Athlon64x2 w/ 8GB RAM), but the Vista install is pretty messed up and it needs to be wiped and reinstalled. We're thinking of buying a retail copy of Windows 7 for the fresh install with the idea of transferring the license to a new machine in a few years. I know a retail license can be transferred to a new machine, but is it possible just to move the HDD to a new machine, reactivate, and avoid reinstalling the OS and programs?
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You can probably do this if you sysprep the old windows installation before you move to the future computer.
- First, make a backup. Just in case.
- Test the backup
- run %windir%\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe as an administrator
- Select OOBE, generalise and shutdown.
- After the computer has shut down, move the HDD to the new computer. It should boot without installed drivers.
Hennes
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