Windows Help Req

candlestick

candlestick

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Morning all,

I have recently received a new laptop to replace the one my son & wife managed to kill of between them. Before I got rid of the old one, I whipped out the SSD that I'd very recently installed into it so I could transfer it into my new one.

So now I have the new laptop, which came with a 500Gb drive, running Windows 7 Professional, which I've transferred out and into a caddy that sits in the DVD drive slot. I've then put the SSD drive into the main motherboard slot as the boot drive.....this is where I get confused......

....the SSD drive has a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium on it, which is now flagging that the product key is invalid (I assume because it was locked into the old machine) but my new machine has an OEM version of Windows 7 Professional on it, which I obviously have a key for. Is it possible to upgrade the SSD using this key, or am I looking at a clean install & buying disks to do so?
 
Does the 500gb drive already have data Inc win 7 greater than the ssd size? If not you may be able to clone the 500gb to the ssd using the win 7 restore option.
 
candlestick said:
....the SSD drive has a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium on it, which is now flagging that the product key is invalid (I assume because it was locked into the old machine) but my new machine has an OEM version of Windows 7 Professional on it, which I obviously have a key for. Is it possible to upgrade the SSD using this key, or am I looking at a clean install & buying disks to do so?
Click to expand...

You will need the old activation key to reactivate your old SSD

Also why you be wanting to use the old SSD if it was/is part of the problem of your old laptop having problems?

I would just wipe the old SSD and use the new one as the main OS hard disk
 
The reason you are having a problem with the new SSD is that when you put it in the new PC it sees a new motherboard and CPU and this doesn't correspond to the old mobo/CPU so problem you are seeing is that the disk in the new PC is rejecting the code as invalid.

Your second problem is that the old machine was running Home Premium, the new one Professional and you cannot use a Pro key on Home Premium (AFAIK). As I see it you have two choices:

  • Try revalidating the home premium key from the old laptop in the new laptop. Although as an OEM product key, this isn't strictly kosher as the license code is for the machine it was delivered on, Microsoft themselves have to do the revalidation and I have done it twice with my OEM copy of Win 7. I would then not use the Pro key for anything else - just in case.
  • If that fails, you will need to reinstall Win 7 Pro and use the license key that came with your new laptop. You do NOT need to buy disks, you can get fully valid Win 7 disks from Digital River who are a licensed MS distributor. See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/248995/how_to_install_windows_7_without_the_disc.html
 
sep9001 said:
Does the 500gb drive already have data Inc win 7 greater than the ssd size? If not you may be able to clone the 500gb to the ssd using the win 7 restore option.
Click to expand...
This is also true.... You have to clone, not copy, but Windows provides a set of backup utilities to do this if you have a spare USB drive kicking around...
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions. Partial success - the copy of Windows 7 Home Premium was one I bought actually for the old machine.....I've revalidated it and it now seems fine.......now onto the next problem......

The PC now boots fine using the SSD, and have formatted the new drive that came with the PC to NTFS format using a mates USB thingy. Unfortunately, as soon as I put the newly formatted HD into a DVD drive caddy I've bought, and reboot, the PC goes into recovery mode. As soon as I take it out again, everything's fine, apart from the big hole in the side of the laptop.....any suggestions... there doesn't seem to be many options within Acers BIOS setup
 
The hd might have a recovery partition which may be the issue. Have a look a gparted to delete and format the drive.
 
Drop into the BIOS. It probably has the DVD drive set to boot ahead of the HDD.
 
To discover keys download Belarc Advisor and run it. Its a program that interrogates a computer and tells you everything about it including OEM keys for window its running on and everything else
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the suggestions fellow TP'ers - I'll have another tinker tonight, and mebbe stick some screendumps up if I'm still struggling.
 
Think it is hidden partitions - currently merging and wiping the ****ers...that'll fix em!
 
All sorted - partitions merged, drive formated, and now have a laptop with a 256gb SSD for boot, with a fast 500gb normal HD where the DVD drive once was.

Thank you all for your help - another success story for the TP IT service desk.... ;)
 
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