Yes, but only in certain cases.  We recently had a client who had expensive Bloomberg software on his computer.  His motherboard died and he needed desperately to be up and running since he’s a day trader.  The only issue was his license for Bloomberg expired and wasn’t able to reinstall it any more.  The obvious fix was to take the hard drive and throw it in another computer.  Is it that easy?

No, it’s not that easy to take a hard drive and put it into another computer?  Why?  If the motherboard is not the same or very similar, whether XP or Vista, the computer will not start up all the way and will instead give you the typical boot options (i.e. Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Normal Mode, etc).  You’ll need to make sure your computer model is the same and chances are so is the motherboard, and then you can make the hard drive swap.

What do you do if your motherboard is different?  If you’re going from and to Windows XP, you can get by with doing a Windows repair after putting the hard drive in .  You’ll need the Windows XP CD and know how to run an automatic Windows repair and re-certify the license.  You might need a Windows certified technician or you may potentially wipe all of your files.  With Windows Vista, there is no other way typically as Micosoft has become even stricter with Vista.  Even with the same motherboard model, Vista will recognize that it is still a different one and not allow you to boot into Windows…period.

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