Thanks - I understand all your points, except the last sentence. Not sure why opening the case is an issue and what sort of trouble are you referring to?
Bottom line, you are right that it would not be worth the trouble if it was a matter of a few days. I wouldn't even contemplate it. But Dell has unfortunately been (infuriatingly and) singularly unable to confirm even an estimated delivery date, except that now they are talking about mid-January. That is not a few days, and that is what is driving me to think of alternate solutions for the interim. Michael ________________________________ From: Tony B <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 12:17:24 AM Subject: Re: [CGUYS] Swapping Boot Drives In general, no. When you install an OS it senses all the hardware and tries it's best to work with that specific stuff. Replacing something with a lot of hardware - like a motherboard - usually requires reinstalling the OS. Not always, but personally I've never had good luck doing it. An awful lot of work just because you didn't want to wait a few days. Besides, if you break some kind of seal and they discover you've opened the case that could be trouble. On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Michael Wosnick <[email protected]> wrote: > > If I install a legal version of Win7 and install all my programs on a brand > new drive that I put temporarily into the T7500, then when the XPS finally > arrives, would I be able to simply remove the T7500's new boot drive and pop > it into the XPS instead and be functional booting form the swapped drive? I > don't want to spend days setting up all of my programs on the box that has > to be sent back unless I have an easy migration to the right box when it > arrives, i.e. a migration that does not have me re-install either the OS or > more importantly all my programs. Both computers will be running on Win7 but > the hardware is different enough that I am wondering about a) license issues > or more likely b) incompatibility issues that might force me to go the > re-install route. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
