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The one with the dead motherboard is running windows 7, my older machine uses vista. Can’t use the 7 machine to boot up sysprep or anything to make it compatible with the vista hardware. Likewise when they’re both installed on the vista machine, the 7 hard drive’s OS programs are not compatible to run with the vista OS. I’ve tried all I know how to do, but the things I need don’t work with vista and are on the 7 hard drive.
If these are OEM (Brand name computers), then you will need to manually install Windows 7 on the Vista Machine. The computer should be old enough so that Windows 7 contains all the drivers. However, as an anti-piracy measure you cannot simply move a hard drive from one computer into a different computer. If you have a Windows 7 ISO on a USB or DVD, you can manually install it on the Vista machine using the Product Key sticker found on the bottom of the machine that no longer works.
To my knowledge you cannot do what you want to do. You have to reinstall the os then all the programs. However if your willing to either spend the money on the newest Acronis software or to find it on a website, they claim to be able to clone the os to a different machine. Although, I havent had any success getting it to work.
If you only need the data, you can use a virtual machine running windows 7 on the PC running windows Vista! Windows 7 Virtual Machine Microsoft installation instructions VirtualBox (This is what I use) How to mount drive OR why not take out the motherboard from the Vista PC and put it in the Windows 7 machine? You can run your vista programs in windows 7 using compatibility mode. and obviously, you can also run your windows 7 programs on windows 7. how to use compatibility mode
