Windows 10: Swapping Hard Drives from Laptop 10 to Windows 7 Laptop

I am not sure if the other posts mention anything like this before but:

Recently, my Wins10 laptop malfunction and I am not sure exactly how; laptop made beeps relating to CMOS battery (fixed) and cannot read hard drive (or something; not fixed). Anyhow, I acquired another laptop, an older version with Wins7. My genius idea was to simply swap out hard drives, since I saw the system info of Wins 7 laptop fits the requirements necessary for Wins10. I thought since Wins10 is in the hard drive, I swap it out so I can use it from Wins7 laptop; however, there was an error and I forgot what it said again.

Any ideas?

:)

 

swapping laptop hard drives

I have a windows 10 laptop, its a hp 15 notebook pc, my mom has an older hp pavillion laptop, not sure on model number but its running windows 7, Im wondering if it is possible to swap hard drives and have both laptops run fine. If not what do I need to
do in order to make the swap work?

 

Swapping Hard Drives from Laptop 10 to Windows 7 Laptop

I am not sure if the other posts mention anything like this before but:

Recently, my Wins10 laptop malfunction and I am not sure exactly how; laptop made beeps relating to CMOS battery (fixed) and cannot read hard drive (or something; not fixed). Anyhow, I acquired another laptop, an older version with Wins7. My genius idea was to simply swap out hard drives, since I saw the system info of Wins 7 laptop fits the requirements necessary for Wins10. I thought since Wins10 is in the hard drive, I swap it out so I can use it from Wins7 laptop; however, there was an error and I forgot what it said again.

Any ideas?

 

Swapping Hard Drives from Laptop 10 to Windows 7 Laptop

All machines built for Windows 8 and above and supplied by the OEM with Windows pre-installed will have a full Windows key embedded in the firmware. This is only read and used by Setup when doing a clean install. Activation of this 'swapped in' W10 disk would not look for this key in the firmware, rather it would require the PC to already have a digital license for W10 stored on the Microsoft activation servers.


For Windows 7 machines there was an SLP marker embedded in the bios which was not a key. It was just a marker which, together with the generic OEM key in the OEM W7 image, would activate the pre-installed OEM W7 without needing to contact the activation servers.


For W10 to activate on this old W7 PC the PC would already have to have a digital license for W10. It could gain one by upgrading its existing activated W7 to W10. Note that a digital license is only for one edition of W10, Home or Pro. Which license it gets on upgrade depends on which edition of W7 it had.

If the disk to be 'swapped in' is W10 Pro, but the PC only has a digital license for Home, then it will not activate.

If the 'swapped in' disk is W10 Home and the PC's digital license is for W10 Pro that may not activate either, but the installed W10 Home could be upgraded to Pro by entering the generic Pro key, then it would activate.


The main problem in getting the 'transplant patient' to boot would be if the donor machine was UEFI with a gpt disk, but the old W7 PC was a Legacy bios machine that only supports booting from an mbr disk.