Can I keep my old windows 7 hard drive...?

Not going to work unfortunately, The Windows install on that drive will expect to find all the same hardware. When it finds everything is different it will not boot up. If you have it on a CD you may be able to reinstall it on the new rig.

Few things you need to know here:

1. The OS in the old hard drive is tailored for the hardware it was used on. You won't be able to successfully boot that OS on a different computer. Different computer means different motherboard and graphics card and therefore different drivers. You'll get that BSOD when you try.

2. As you only have an upgrade version, you need an existing and working Windows to start with, be it XP, Vista or an lower edition of the one you bought. However, that is easy to work around if you have the product key for your upgrade version. You may do it by the double-install method as discussed here:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/clean-install-window...

Remember not to input the upgrade product key during the first pass. Just let it continue unactivated. Input the product key on the second install.

By the way, if you've lost your upgrade product key, run this:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer...

I always keep a copy of product keys for all programs I have purchased in my email so I don't lose them.

No you can't because the OS will not recognise the hardware.

ANY OS has to be installed from scratch so the hardware can be identified and the correct drivers installed and the right entries made in the Registry.

Seeing that is an upgraded W 7 you will have to install the original OS first [XP or Vista] then upgrade it to W 7 like you did before.

My own W 7 is an upgrade from XP and when I had to reinstall that I had to start right from reinstalling XP first and then go from there by installing the video card, sound and ethernet card drivers, then upgrade it to W 7.

windows installations are really specific to the machine they're installed on if you put that hard drive in another computer it's 95% certain you'll have problems as the hardware is bound to be different

problems that you're likely to encounter are

1:- not booting

2:- windows missing chipset drivers giving errors galore

3:- windows going into a boot loop where windows loading screen appears then crashes and starts again over and over

4:- if you are lucky enough to get windows to boot successfully windows will almost certainly want to be reactivated and if that version of windows is an OEM version you won't be able to activate it

The upgrade will overwrite, the previous installation. You then reinstall your drivers. The video drivers, will install better in VGA mode. Your Data is safe.

hi ethan

since microsoft started with software this problem of there software not accepting a drive from an older computer has always been an issue like rob says it is not going to work.

so you need to do a cold re-install for it to work again.

If you insert the hard drive with windows 7 into a new computer, you're asking? Yep, everything should be intact.