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Problems Booting Off External HDD


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#1
rulibar8

rulibar8

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Hi There

Long story short:
Laptop went bad.
Removed HDD.
Bought an external enclosure and a new desktop PC.
Using HDD as an external.
New PC Windows 7 is currently not activated.

Since the old HDD has an active Windows 7 installed on it, which I no longer need, I would like to boot through the old HDD and acquire my product key. I access the BIOS and tell the comp to boot from the HDD, but from what I can tell the HDD doesn't recognize the new components and won't successfully boot.

Any suggestions? Any additional information?
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#2
rshaffer61

rshaffer61

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You have a couple of problem.
First is that the serial number you are trying to use is for the laptop and cannot legally be transferred to the pc.
Second is that booting to the laptop hd won't work because it is looking for the laptop and the drivers will not math up.
Third if your pc is new where did the Win7 come from that is installed and not activated?
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