Dual booting W7 and pre-installed xp drive from another computer

T

tedzot

Member
My friend has a computer with windows xp installed. He just bought an almost identical computer but a slightly later model. I just got through installing Windows 7 on the newer one. The question I have is would we be able to take the hard drive out of his other system and put it into his new system and dual boot using Easy BCD? He doesn't want to lose all his files and programs he is used to and would like to have access to them still.

Thanks in advance again for all your good work and support folks. :smile:
 
If it came with XP pre-installed, then the OS will have a xxx-OEM-yyyyyyy-zzzzz serial number, which is linked permanently to the original hardware, and will fail activation on a different PC.
It violates the EULA to move OEM Windows between PCs.
Only a full-retail copy comes with a serial number which entitles the user to move it from one system to another, and even that is limited to a single copy. Once activated on the new PC, the copy on the previous PC becomes "pirate" and will fail WGA checks.
 
Oh I didn't realize that that would happen but I guess in theory you could still dual boot? Not that I advocate piracy...:shame:
What if I have another legit copy and install it on a separate hard drive...not a partition...could I dual boot that way?

Thanks for your patience...
 
Single boot or dual boot, one HDD or many, once Windows starts it will detect the change of environment (if it starts at all, remember that essential drivers for the new hardware might not exist), and require re-activation.
If it's OEM, it won't be validated.
If it's retail, it will validate, but the original installation from that serial number then becomes invalid.
There can only be one legitimate copy per licence.
If your old retail CD is no longer in use anywhere else, you can install a new copy anywhere you like. (or you could simply activate the OEM version using the retail key if it's not in use on another PC.)
 
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