[mopar440]

Howdy... I have a perfectly functioning Gateway pc with Windows Vista Home Premium. Recently purchased a Dell laptop designed for Windows XP, and is Vista compatible... previous owner of laptop kept hard drive, and I have a 1TB external USB hard drive... my question is, can I clone or copy my pc's OS to use on my laptop, and how to do it... I have the OS product key, from my original pc.

 

Thanks!

 

Keith

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Hi mopar440 (nice big block), welcome to Geeks to Go!

 

Technically, there's nothing stopping you from cloning the drive using the right software. However, an OEM license of Windows is only licensed to the machine on which it was originally installed, and is non-transferable. New system, new Windows license.

 

Vista activation has an algorithm that looks for changes to a system. It will probably detect it's installed on a new system and throw an activation error. Finally, unless the systems are very similar, Windows will likely even refuse to boot. There are ways to fix that boot issue, but we'd be getting the cart far ahead of the horse to offer instruction now.

[admin]

Hi mopar440 (nice big block), welcome to Geeks to Go!

 

Technically, there's nothing stopping you from cloning the drive using the right software. However, an OEM license of Windows is only licensed to the machine on which it was originally installed, and is non-transferable. New system, new Windows license.

 

Vista activation has an algorithm that looks for changes to a system. It will probably detect it's installed on a new system and throw an activation error. Finally, unless the systems are very similar, Windows will likely even refuse to boot. There are ways to fix that boot issue, but we'd be getting the cart far ahead of the horse to offer instruction now.

[mopar440]

OK... that's what I was afraid of... well, thanks for answering!

[mopar440]

And, yes, 440's are the ultimate big-block!