Exchanging Hard Drives

O

Obscura

New Member
Hello, I am not new to this forum but I lost my old username. Anyways, I have a question about putting an old hard drive in a new computer. I am building 4 new computers for the office I work at. The problem is, we don't want to have to replace all of the expensive programs (including Windows) that are on the old computers. All of our current computers are Dell Dimension 4500s. So I was wondering if I would be able to take our the old hard drives, put them in the new computers (along with a new hard drive), and set it as the primary boot device. Would I still be able to use all of the old programs? I am 99% sure that it will work, but I wanted to get a second opinion before we shell out a bunch of money on new computers.

Thanks in advance,
Cameron
 
Your are wrong, legally you can't use the windows installation from a Dell computer on a new system(even if you could get it to work). You will have to go buy an operating system for each new computer. Dell uses an OEM license for their Operating Systems and it can only be used on that particular machine. Once you buy new hardware, in your case, a whole new computer, you can't use that type of a license. You will have to purchase the full version or OEM version of an OS. You can't even use the Dell reinstallation cd to install on a nondell machine. The cd will only install when it recognizes a Dell bios string, which you won't have when building new computers.
 
It very likely won't work if you were to put the hard drives with new hardware (processor, motherboard and RAM). When an original equipment manufacturer like Dell installs Windows on a hard drive the software is made to run with the specific hardware.

I pulled the hard drive out of an old system I had and put it with a new motherboard, processor and RAM. What happened was I would get blue screen of death crashes. If buying Windows for the new computers is too expensive for you then I would scratch the idea.

Have you installed more RAM on your old computers? You may be able to get a little more performance out of them with some more memory.
 
Hmmm, I thought something like this might be an issue. The thing about these computers is that we have already maxed them out on RAM, so upgrading that is not an option. Well, what about the other programs on the computer, like Microsoft Office? Would I at least be able to keep those? I find it rather annoying that the biggest cost of building a computer usually ends up being the OS, at least in my experience.
 
Your cheapest option may be to buy a refurbished computer with the operating system already installed. Take a look at this refurbished computer:

Systemax Venture H358 Desktop PC Refurbished - $280 (without shipping costs)
Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200
Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic
RAM: 2 Gigabytes DDR2
Hard Drive: 80 Gigabyte

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4505251&CatId=2632

Ever looked at the program Open Office? It's a free program that has many of the features of Microsoft Word and Excel.
 
One of the biggest reasons we aren't buying pre-built computers is that they all come with Vista these days. The people in my office hate Vista and we also need everything to be compatable with eachother (some of the computers aren't being replaced). Another big issue is that most of the time, pre-built computers aren't very upgradeable (or else we wouldn't even be in this predicament). I found a place that sells cheap license keys for Windows XP, but I don't want to have to buy new programs too.

Thanks for your help,
Cameron
 
You are definitely right about pre-built computers having Windows Vista on them. Overall, Vista has gotten a bad reputation but is actually not a bad operating system (at least for home users). I can see how you don't want to intermingle Vista with Windows XP computers on a network as it will likely be problematic.

I would suggest you take a look at the Open Office programs as they are a good substitute for Microsoft Word and Excel.

http://download.openoffice.org/
 
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