A Thinkpad T61p died (motherboard), I think hdd is ok.
I then mounted the hdd in a Thinkpad R61i; after hardware change warning, it gave BSOD and instantly shut down.
Is it possible to maintain the Windows installation on this disk? In case how can I best make this happen?
EDIT: I have a full Windows 7 license (not OEM).
Something like Acronis Universal Restore might help in this case:
Acronis Universal Restore is the unique technology developed in Acronis that allows changing Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.dll) and device drivers.
It is designed to allow a machine to boot its operating system initially after a restoration/deployment of an image to hardware that is different from the one it was taken from, and then proceed with the installation of other drivers and configuration.
Acronis Universal Restore allows changing Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.dll) and install mass storage boot device drivers into the system.
Part of the recovery process, It installs boot device drivers (e.g. hard drive or RAID controller drivers) into the system, so that the operating system can boot from this boot device. If there are proper NIC drivers present in the folder with the drivers, Acronis Universal Restore will copy them into the restored system and will schedule their installation on Windows boot-up.
(!) All the other drivers (e.g. video and sound card drivers, plug and play drivers) are not installed by Acronis Universal Restore, as they can be installed in Windows after the successful migration.
Acronis Universal Restore is applicable for:
- Instant recovery of a failed system on different hardware (hard drive controllers, RAID controllers, NIC) (Acronis Universal Restore);
- Hardware-independent cloning and deployment of operating systems (Acronis Universal Deploy and Acronis Universal Restore);
- Real-to-virtual and virtual-to-real computer migration for system recovery, testing and other purposes (Acronis Universal Restore).
(!) Acronis Universal Restore does not support or install plug and play drivers.
Acronis Universal Restore is required to restore a system to another hardware configuration. It does automatically detect if the HAL should be changed (and changes it) and also installs drivers for HDD controllers and NIC (if they can be found).
If any system-critical driver cannot be found, one will get a warning message during the restoration process.
(!) You do not need to have Acronis Universal Restore installed to back up a system. You only need Acronis Universal Restore to restore a system to dissimilar hardware.
Yes, you are going to have to reinstall Windows, as it has noticed a change in the motherboard and the Windows 7 license key is tied to the original motherboard.
You could do this in Windows 98, and as long as the machine would boot with the same drivers already installed for the previous hardware, it would run and let you install any drivers needed for the new hardware. Since XP (probably NT 4.0, but I have no direct experience with that version), if Windows detects a "significant" hardware change on startup, it'll refuse to boot and require a reinstall. This will occur even if the same CPU, RAM, and video hardware are carried over to a new motherboard (I've encountered exactly this), and the same appears to be true of Vista and Windows 7.
I haven't used Win8 or later, but it's very likely the same for those, because it's a way for MS to limit your ability to use a single installed OS across upgrades, hence collect more license fees. FWIW, it probably wouldn't work well unless the new MB, CPU, and video are nearly identical, so reinstalling would be a good idea anyway.
