Installing Windows on one machine, then moving the HDD to another?

[CurseTheSky]

Hi guys,

I have two computers in my signature sitting in front of me. I recently installed an X-25M G2 80GB in my desktop with the intentions of putting the 160GB in my laptop. Windows 7 Pro installed flawlessly on the desktop, but now I'm not sure what to do with the laptop - it doesn't have a CD drive.

Unfortunately ASUS supplies a recovery CD, not just a regular OS disk like Dell and some other manufacturers do. If I had a spare Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit disk hanging around (or an ISO), I'd just use that to create a bootable USB drive, but I don't, and I refuse to download it from any "questionable" sources.

So, I was thinking: is there any harm in putting the soon-to-be laptop's hard drive in my desktop, booting from the ASUS recovery disk and installing Windows 7 Home Premium, removing the HDD after installation and putting it in the laptop? For example, does Windows 7 load a generic batch of drivers, or will it install specific drivers for the hardware that's detected, causing a BSOD when I place it into the laptop after?

Thank you.

 

[jdjbuffalo]

Windows 7 is a lot better than older OS' at being able to boot and load drivers on a completely different computer. I've heard of other people doing it without much trouble. That being said, I still wouldn't recommend it.

I would go with the questionable sources and get my hands on an OEM or ASUS OEM Windows 7 disc. Then I would verify it was correct by using the MD5 hashes that are available to validate you got the right disc without any "extras". I can't lookup these, as I'm at work now, but you should be able to find them pretty easily.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I appreciate the input, but I have zero experience with torrents and such things. I'd prefer not to go to Google and type in "Windows 7 Home Premium x64 download" simply because I don't know what I can trust and what I can't (viruses aren't my biggest concern; I'd rather avoid the slim chance of having the police knocking at my door).

 

[theevilsharpie]

Why don't you copy your Windows installation disc from a USB flash drive and install from there?

 

[ahenkel]

well from experience I went from a p35 chipset to a p55 chipset and I just swapped the hard drive. No BSOD no massive errors. First boot took about 5 minutes and then I used Ccleaner and went ad uninstalled the removed hardware from device manager and its been stable and smooth as crisco on glass.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm not sure what the Asus Recovery CD will do on your desktop. I recently tried a Toshiba XP Recovery CD on a different laptop and it took about three seconds for it to fail with a, "Sorry, wrong hardware" message on the laptop's screen.

Depending on your partitions on the 500 GB disk and on your backup capabilities, you might be able to clone your boot partition from the 500 GB disk onto the 160 GB disk. Windows 7's built-in backup is capable, I believe, of doing a system restore from a larger disk to a smaller disk as long as the actual boot partition size fits on the smaller disk. Vista/Server 2008 couldn't do that, but Server 2008 R2 can do it and I'm guessing that the similar Win7 can do it.

Overall, though, I'd probably start with copying the recovery disk(s) to USB and trying that.

 

[sivart]

If the chipsets are different, you will probably have issues.

I would take my ASUS disc, find a 4GB USB drive and make a bootable USB drive and install from there.

Create USB Install Disc

I did this with Windows 7 a few weeks ago. Took about 20 minutes from install to desktop.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I made a bootable USB drive (8GB), and copied the files from the ASUS recovery disk over. Unfortunately it boots into Windows (like it's about to let me install), then sits on a screen with a gray background image and gives me a mouse cursor, but nothing else. It seems like it's going through all the right steps, but not quite getting to the Windows 7 reformat / reinstall options. Ugh.

I wish I knew someone with a Windows 7 Home Premium x64 disk. I bet the problem is the ASUS recovery disk.

 

[JackMDS]

Did you contact Asus?

HP does the same, but you can order a real Win 7 disk from their site paying the shipping.

 

[sivart]

Sounds like it is time to buy an external USB DVD drive.

 

[CurseTheSky]

After comparing the contents of the ASUS recovery DVD to a retail Windows 7 Professional DVD, it looks like the ASUS one has hardly any contents. Whether it's packaged in a special way or not, I don't know, but I don't see any of the .dlls and whatnot that are included in the /sources directory of a Windows disk. If I had to guess, I'd say the recovery DVD isn't designed to recover the system completely by itself, and instead taps into the recovery partition for some of the required files. I don't know for sure, as that seems a bit silly to me (considering hard drives do die).

Either that, or the ASUS recovery DVD only works when it's booted from the ASUS laptop. On a laptop with no built-in DVD drive, that seems a bit silly to me. I'm trying to avoid spending $50 on an external if I can. Ugh.

I sent in a support inquiry to ASUS, so hopefully I'll get some good news back. Thanks for the suggestions guys.