I have an emachines ET1331G-03W with windows 7 pre installed. The motherboard (most likely the processor) decided to quit working. So I bought a wicked awesome gaming pc from a garage sale that didn't have a hard drive. I tried to swap my hard drive from my emachines to the new computer and it says there's no bootable drive. It doesn't matter what one of my 5 computers I put the hard drive in, it won't boot up. How can I get my data (pictures, music, etc) off of the hard drive, or how can i make it work in a new computer with all new hardware? I would prefer to keep using the same hard drive in a new computer if possible
Computers & Internet - eMachines
Answers & Comments
Microsoft has a license type called OEM which detects the computer that it is installed on and some computers have the licence key stored in the bios of the computer.
So when you grab the old hard drive and put it in the next computer Windows will detect you changed computers and not run as per OEM licensing rules that it runs on only the original purchased computer.
You might be able to run the drive as a secondary drive but you would need to install a new windows operating system and hard drive. And then use a partioning program to make the secondary drive not an active drive.
also you new machine most likely has a different type of bios called EFI
and you would have to change its settings to run AMI Bios but I do not think that is your problem as I think it is OEM but it might be worth investigating if you can run a legacy bios in the bios settings.
Sorry I do not know that one. Just know it has the key as I had to download windows 8 OEM and put it back on one of my laptops without me knowing the key. Windows also records the hardware and stores it somewhere online I think and compares this also. If you are really adventurous you could experiment with running UBUNTU on your p.c. it may be a way of accessing the old drive and retrieving files off it.
I have not tried this or played with VMWARE so for me this is only theory I have played around with Ubuntu and there are heaps of info about Ubuntu on the internet
You might be able to install Ubuntu and run a vm ware on ithttps://vitux.com/how-to-install-vmware-...
and then emulate windows 7https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevange...https://techjourney.net/free-windows-7-w...https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Windows-...