If you’ve recently bought your new computer or made major changes in the hardware configuration, for instance you’ve changed your mother board of your computer, you might be unable to run the previously installed Windows 7 operating system. The very usual fact is that the users accept this situation and they reinstall the operating system in the new computer .
But, you can save your time and energy transferring the old installed Windows 7 operating system instead of reinstalling it in your new hardware configuration. The situation of transferring your operating system happens in the following cases:
1. You’ve changed a major part of your hardware but the hard disk is same which contains the Windows 7 operating system.
2. You have bought a new computer with different configuration and want to transfer the OS from your old computer in the new one.
Here, we’ll learn to transfer your old Windows 7 OS for new hardware configuration keeping the old hard disk unplaced. Let’s start.
Before changing your hardware devices follow the steps below.
1. Boot Windows 7 normally and run the command prompt as administrator (Start >All Programs > Accessories >Right-click on Command Prompt > Click on “Run as administrator”).
2. In the command prompt type: %windir%System32SysprepSysprep.exe, hit [Enter].
3. The System Preparation dialog box opens. Here choose Enter System Out-of-Box-Experince (OOBE) for “System Cleanup Action”, select the check box Generalize, select“Shutdown Options” as Shutdown and click OK.
4. The System Preparation tool generalizes now the Windows system setup and shutdowns after the completion. Caution: Do not run any other programs when the process is on the way.
5. Now you can replace your new hardware or mount the hard disk to a new computer. After getting ready with your system, boot your PC from the hard disk which contains the generalized Windows 7.
6. When booting, you can notice it as if you are installing a fresh Windows 7 setup. It installs the default drivers and updates the system registry. The complete procedure needs one or two reboots depending on your system specifications.
7. At last it boots finally and you need to enter all necessary information as needed at the time of a fresh installation.
8. When creating a user for the PC, do not put the old user name as it already exists in the system.
You can create a temporary user for the purpose of completing the process and log-on with the old user name choosing from the list at the log-on screen. For instance, you can give the user name as Temp.
9. You are almost done. Windows now boots to default OOBE first boot desktop. Notice that all your installed programs are there, also your old user profiles and folders as well. Windows installed the default drivers, though you can update them if you need.
10. If you wish to delete the temporary user profile that you have earlier created, go toControl Panel > User Profile and delete that. In this case it is Temp.
Obviously, this reduces both your time and energy. Share your thoughts with us.