Swapping drives with installed win7 OS on them between 2 boxes

A

amd7674

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 1, 2007
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Since I swap my PCs, my desktop PC still uses slow 80GB with installed OS, so I was wondering if I can swap drives and use WD Black on my main PC without reinstalling win7 32bit pro on both boxes? Is it possible and will win7 handle picking up new hardware/drivers?

Or do I have to reinstall win7 on both drives after move?
If latter do I have to contact Microsoft about releasing my license key before activating on the new PC?

TIA ;)
 
Do you plan on permanently discarding the "main PC" that your WD Black drive is currently in?
Are these OEM licenses of Windows? (non transferrable) or Retail versions (transferrable)
If they're retail, licensing will allow you to do what you hope to do, but then you have the all new hardware/drivers issue depending on how different the platform is you're moving the drive to. Sometimes you can get away with it if the hardware is similar, sometimes you need to do some coaxing and massaging, other times it will flat out freak out and refuse to run if the hardware and drive controllers are way different.
 
windows might detect the new hardware when you swap but it will deactivate when you switch. that will happen every time you change from pc to pc.
 
thanks guys,

both are retail copies, so I guess I'll have to reactivate license with Microsoft. Probably best and saftest would be to install clean win7 on both machines.... Hmmm... I guess I'll do it when I get few spare cycles...
 
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