Use old win7-10 hdd to upgrade vista pc?

Hello everyone and thank you for making this forum available.
I appreciate your willingness and generosity to share your knowledge and experience.

I am seeking advice and suggestions on upgrading a Vista PC from a hard drive that
came out of my Win7-Win10 laptop.
(The laptop mobo-gpu burned up)

I want to upgrade the Vista PC to Win7-Win10 because apps I use run better on Win7-Win10.
Also, MS will support Win7-Win10 longer into the future than Vista.
****************
The Vista PC is a Gateway DX4710-09
(about 5 years old, works great)
Vista Home Prem x64 SP2
586 gig hdd with 435 gig free
6 gig ram
Win7 Update Advisor says OK to upgrade.
*****************
The Win7-Win10 laptop HDD came from a Gateway NV7310u
(about 4 years old, the hdd works great, the laptop mobo-gpu burned out)
Win7 Home Prem x64 successfully upgraded to Win10 via the free upgrade
250 gig hdd with 125 gig free
******************
I made a DVD of Win7 sp1 x17-58997.iso
******************
I have a Sabrent USB-DSC9 hard drive adapter
******************

Thanks again for your help!

Since you made a Windows 7 DVD, why can't you do the upgrade to Windows 7 with that? I would use the old laptop hard drive/USB adapter to save an image of your current Windows Vista, just in case something goes wrong.

Or are you asking about using the likely OEM license for Windows 7 from the old laptop to upgrade the desktop, which violates the EULA and we can't help you with - assuming the laptop came with pre-installed Windows 7 and you did not purchase a retail version of Windows 7?

NavyLCDR said:

Since you made a Windows 7 DVD, why can't you do the upgrade to Windows 7 with that? I would use the old laptop hard drive/USB adapter to save an image of your current Windows Vista, just in case something goes wrong.

Or are you asking about using the likely OEM license for Windows 7 from the old laptop to upgrade the desktop, which violates the EULA and we can't help you with - assuming the laptop came with pre-installed Windows 7 and you did not purchase a retail version of Windows 7?

Thanks for your fast reply NavyLCDR (and for your USN service).

I didn't think about EULA.
(You are correct. Win7/10 on the laptop hdd is OEM.)
My plan was put Win7/10 onto the Vista desktop and keep the old laptop hdd to store some files until I eventually
put those files on to a new laptop.

Do I correctly understand?...

1. The only LEGAL way to put Win7 on to the Vista desktop is to purchase a Win7 Upgrade.
It does not matter that the laptop Win7/10 hdd will no longer be used.

2. Win7/10 from the laptop hdd, or from the DVD, can be put onto the Vista desktop and will work OK.
The technology supports an upgrade like this but the EULA does not.

Please let me know, and thanks again.

Leecifer said:

Thanks for your fast reply NavyLCDR (and for your USN service).

I didn't think about EULA.
(You are correct. Win7/10 on the laptop hdd is OEM.)
My plan was put Win7/10 onto the Vista desktop and keep the old laptop hdd to store some files until I eventually
put those files on to a new laptop.

Do I correctly understand?...

1. The only LEGAL way to put Win7 on to the Vista desktop is to purchase a Win7 Upgrade.
It does not matter that the laptop Win7/10 hdd will no longer be used.

2. Win7/10 from the laptop hdd, or from the DVD, can be put onto the Vista desktop and will work OK.
The technology supports an upgrade like this but the EULA does not.

Please let me know, and thanks again.

#1. Yes
#2. That depends on the hardware and the drivers. Some older systems upgrade without a problem and others are a nightmare trying to get the right drivers. I 'll try to find a link so you can ran a test to see if your hardware is compatible.

Here's some info that may help. Windows 10: Will your PC run it? | ZDNet

Winuser said:

Here's some info that may help. Windows 10: Will your PC run it? | ZDNet

Thank you Winuser.

Your link got me to
Upgrade to Windows 8.1 from Windows Vista or Windows XP - Windows Help

and the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant.

The Win8 Assistant said I'm OK.
The ZDNet article said OK for 8/8.1 usually means OK for Win10.

But the pesky EULA issue remains, notwithstanding my brilliant ability to rationalize it away.

Thanks again to NavyLCDR and you!
I'll stop here. I don't want to take up any more of your time.
You folks are the best!

You can't take a hard drive loaded with OS and drivers for one system and put it in another system which uses different hardware. Chances of it even booting would be slim. The only way you can move the OS to dissimilar hardware is to backup the old system using backup software that has this feature of restoring to dissimilar hardware(which you can't do because all you have is the hard drive) and then restoring the backup on the other system. After restore you deal with installing the correct drivers. In your case that's really all moot because you can only move a retail copy of an OS to another machine, not an OEM copy. Even then you have to contact Microsoft to get it activated.

lgentry said:

You can't take a hard drive loaded with OS and drivers for one system and put it in another system which uses different hardware. Chances of it even booting would be slim.

That simply is not true, especially as Windows has evolved from NT 4.0 to 10. Most of the time moving a hard drive from one computer to another will only result in new drivers getting loaded. Only a few components must be the same: mostly just legacy bios or UEFI bios and IDE, AHCI or RAID mode on the disk controller and if you set the Windows to boot into safe mode before moving the hard drive the mode of the disk controller doesn't even matter all that much.

However, unless the new computer moved to already has a digital entitlement for Windows 10 stored on Microsoft activation servers, Windows 10 will deactivate itself and remain deactivated until a valid activation method is provided.

And there are legal and valid reasons for doing so. For example - I have a family 3 pack retail license for Windows 7. My new computer components are arriving this week to replace my current computer and I will install one new installation of Windows 7 on it (using the SSD from my current computer) and upgrade to Windows 10. The hard drive out of my father-in-law's computer, which has a retail license for Windows 10 is getting moved from his computer to my old computer which also had a Windows 10 upgrade from a Windows 7 retail license on it. His old computer is going to Goodwill without a hard drive in it.

I'm glad it works for you. Most every time I've tried it I ran into some kind of trouble either during or after the transition. I would encounter blue screens, very slow performance, or activation issues. Removing all devices and their drivers before removal of drive tends to help some. But most people trying this have an OEM copy which opens up a can of worms. I, too. have done this with a retail copy of 7 several times. I then upgraded that copy of 7 to 10 and again moved it to another machine successfully along with its activation by entering the prod. key from 7. However, I followed up with a clean install. I'm just a stickler for making sure I don't have any unnecessary junk floating around in my systems so as not to get bit in the a$$ later. As users we don't know what unnecessary dlls, conflicting registry entries, hidden files, etc are on a hard drive for a given type of hardware. Moving that drive to another machine is just asking for some kind of trouble on down the road.
But the normal user has OEM windows and most not tech savvy enough to know how to deal with the problems that might arise. I don't think it's good to make people think that moving a hard drive is a good idea because everything considered, it's not. In a nutshell-can it be done? Sometimes. Should it be done? No..
That's just my opinion. Experience has shown me that the only one my opinion means anything to is me.

You don't have to worry about taking up any of my time Leecifer . I have been helped on this forum many times. I don't mind returning the favor by trying to help others when possible. :)