Any good way of moving Win7Home OEM to SSD and new hardware?

Boss needs to update his PC, either the chip or the Mobo went out last week and took the other with it and I discovered simply popping his HDD into generic hardware was not going to happen. Ebay hardwareh got him runnning again, but it did show a problem for a upgrade. The source machine is an A6 3600 vintage HP Pavilion. HP is doing some weird EFI shit and no other board will try to boot from that drive. Because it is OEM Win7 Home, retail Win7 installer refuses to try to rebuild the efi. I'd be ok with going clean retail Win7 install on the new hardware, but he is using both an old version of office 2010 and some form of Works and doesn't want to budge off of either, nor does he have any install keys for either at this point. Clean install is going to be hours of work to try to rebuild.

Original.plan was to clone the HDD to the SSD and then boot from that, but of the EFI is HP specific like it seems, that won't get me anywhere on new hardware.

Anyway to move forward with this?

So you already got him up and running on eBay replacement parts but now he wants an upgrade? With that much hardware changing, I'd tell him it's time to either find the licenses or get ready to shell out the cash for new Office / Works.

If the hardware is currently running, I'd try to get one of those apps / programs that pulls the serial number from the registry and jot it down and try to reinstall using that (if you can find some install media that is). Otherwise I'd tell him to bite the bullet on spending some cash on new versions. Of course you can always install bootlegs onto the new setup (or gray market from one of the guys selling here on [H]))

Clone it to the SSD, boot from the SSD in the original machine, run sysprep (google for the settings to use), then put the SSD in the new machine and see if it works.

Win7 OEM + new hardware = you're going to have to buy a new Windows most likely.

The eBay hardware was a Mobo/chip combo for 25$ that matched what went up in smoke. It was a stop gap until he is ready to pull the trigger on upgrade hardware.

As for buying new office/works: we already have small business liscene for 5 PC with Office 365, but he hates it and much prefers his 2010. Don't even get me started on Works... He has enough money to know money can buy his way out of problems, but not enough (will) to actually do that.

Zepher said:

Clone it to the SSD, boot from the SSD in the original machine, run sysprep (google for the settings to use), then put the SSD in the new machine and see if it works.

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This will probably be what I try first. The EFI partition is the worry, as it's not something a generic retail style board is recongizing.

I figure I'll have to acquire a Win7 key, and I am ok with that, if I can pop in a new key and not have to reinstall everything. That's the problem, I really don't want to reload everything on this damn box.

Would it be feasible to image the main partition, clean install win7 on the SSD then overwrite the windows partition with the image saved from the original? Yes windows will probably want a new license, but that is doable.

try what zeph said or you should be able to find an iso of the hp 7 home disc and you might be able to repair the efi/boot with that. if you do have to rebuild magicjellybean can get the key for office and prob works. although the last copy of works I ran into I was able to just copy it(program folder) to a new system and it just worked. maybe try that, toss it on a thumb drive.

Thanks for the heads-up on magicjellybean. Using a retail Win7 iso will not repair the EFI. I tried that the first time, it picks it up as an OEM install and tells you to use the OEM provided recovery tools... Which you can't access unless you are using the OEM Mobo to boot that drive.

Any thoughts on whether or not copying over the image would work?

you could try Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD app since it doesn't do a clone but does a migration.
I use it all the time, costs $20 but was well worth it.

You could do the migration to the SSD, then just try and boot the SSD in with the new hardware to see if it will boot. I know Windows 7 and newer are a lot more forgiving when swapping hardware around without using Sysprep.
Only thing to look out for is if the current Windows 7 is running in IDE mode vs AHCI, you will have to set the BIOS on the new machine to IDE otherwise you will blue screen when you boot.
you can change a registry setting in Windows to enable AHCI, and it will be able to boot in either mode.

I've done dozens and dozens of hardware swaps with Windows 7 and only had 1 or 2 failures requiring a re-installation.

i meant the oem hp disk, you can find isos easy. retail wont fix oem and vise versa.
clone to the ssd and sysprep as zepher said. or try recreating the efi(needs oem disk):
http://woshub.com/how-to-repair-deleted-efi-partition-in-windows-7/

Also, Migrate to SSD can read and migrate OS's that aren't running on the system.
For example, you could pull out the drive from the HP, plug it into your PC along with the SSD, run Migrate to SSD and it will see any OS on any attached drives and allow you migrate that install to another drive.

I do all the migrations from my main PC, I just attach the source and destination drives to my PC and run the app,



I use a USB dock for 3.5" drives and USB to SATA cables for 2.5" drives.

Brrr.. reading that give me shills. Plugging a windows drive to a windows host and then transfer it to third resounds to me of having two hookers in South Africa without a profalectic.

B00nie said:

Brrr.. reading that give me shills. Plugging a windows drive to a windows host and then transfer it to third resounds to me of having two hookers in South Africa without a profalectic.

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I've been using the Migration tool since 2012, only had 1 issue in all that time. couldn't get a migration or clone to work on a 2016 HP Slimline desktop.
It's an odd machine, uses a laptop power supply, SODIMMs, and a Celeron processor.

Zepher said:

I've been using the Migration tool since 2012, only had 1 issue in all that time. couldn't get a migration or clone to work on a 2016 HP Slimline desktop.
It's an odd machine, uses a laptop power supply, SODIMMs, and a Celeron processor.
View attachment 105047

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It may work but also exposes you to any potential infection any of the machines have. For example you start to clone a windows which has a rootkit or infection x (from the thousands available) then both your clone host and the new host gets it, and every other machine you clone after that.

Zepher said:

Also, Migrate to SSD can read and migrate OS's that aren't running on the system.
For example, you could pull out the drive from the HP, plug it into your PC along with the SSD, run Migrate to SSD and it will see any OS on any attached drives and allow you migrate that install to another drive.

I do all the migrations from my main PC, I just attach the source and destination drives to my PC and run the app,

View attachment 104872

I use a USB dock for 3.5" drives and USB to SATA cables for 2.5" drives.
View attachment 104873 View attachment 104874

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Zepher, are you using the free version of the software? What are the limitations regarding the free version? Looks like a renamed AOMEI Backupper plus.

I usually use Samsung SSD's so I can use the Samsung Magician software that comes bundled with the drives when it comes to cloning an appropriately sized install from a large HDD to a smaller SSD, this tool looks interesting.

Mazzspeed said:

Zepher, are you using the free version of the software? What are the limitations regarding the free version? Looks like a renamed AOMEI Backupper plus.

I usually use Samsung SSD's so I can use the Samsung Magician software that comes bundled with the drives when it comes to cloning an appropriately sized install from a large HDD to a smaller SSD, this tool looks interesting.

Click to expand...

I am using the paid version, I actually have the $20 Migrate OS to SSD and the $50 Hard Disk Manager Suite 15. the Suite has Migrate OS to SSD as well as regular cloning and hard drive utilities.
My friend actually bought me the Suite when I was trying to migrate and clone the drive in that HP I posted above, it was his girlfriends PC and we were trying to upgrade to an SSD.
The Migrate didn't work, thought it might have been my older version not working with a Windows 10 migration so we bought the latest version of Migrate and that didn't work, so we bought the Suite to do a clone, and that didn't work either.
That was the only machine that I haven't been able to do a clone or migration with.
His girlfriend ended up getting a refurb Lenovo i5 that I recommended since this HP was a really low end machine, Celeron processor with a passmark score of 900 and 4GB ram.
I did a migration for her Lenovo when she got it and had no issues at all.

Zepher said:

I am using the paid version, I actually have the $20 Migrate OS to SSD and the $50 Hard Disk Manager Suite 15. the Suite has Migrate OS to SSD as well as regular cloning and hard drive utilities.
My friend actually bought me the Suite when I was trying to migrate and clone the drive in that HP I posted above, it was his girlfriends PC and we were trying to upgrade to an SSD.
The Migrate didn't work, thought it might have been my older version not working with a Windows 10 migration so we bought the latest version of Migrate and that didn't work, so we bought the Suite to do a clone, and that didn't work either.
That was the only machine that I haven't been able to do a clone or migration with.
His girlfriend ended up getting a refurb Lenovo i5 that I recommended since this HP was a really low end machine, Celeron processor with a passmark score of 900 and 4GB ram.
I did a migration for her Lenovo when she got it and had no issues at all.

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Can you install it on more than one machine assuming it's uninstalled off the old machine to perform migrations, or do you just plug the source and destination drives you plan to migrate into the one PC each time?

Mazzspeed said:

Can you install it on more than one machine assuming it's uninstalled off the old machine to perform migrations, or do you just plug the source and destination drives you plan to migrate into the one PC each time?

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Not sure about multiple installations, I just have it installed on my main PC and just do it all on this machine.

Ya, you can deactivate and reactive the license when moving the program between machines.
You can do it 5 times before you have to contact support to release the counter for the activation's
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/migrate-OS-to-SSD/#faq

Also, Migrate OS to SSD is not separate anymore, it's part of Drive Copy Advanced and costs $30 for a 3 machine license.