swapping a 32bit vista harddrive to a 64 bit computer that came with 8?

[nullnor]

in a nutshell I took the HDD with vista still on it from my old acer that is dying and put in in the new acer that came with windows 8. it recognized it in the bios and automatically set itself to master as it was the only HDD. it's set up first in the boot options, although that option was different from the drive that came with it. the newer drive identified as boot menu and the old one I was trying to get in there identified as ahci and ide. and when I boot it says no bootable device.

I read that the operating systems are married to the motherboard these days. I expected it to boot and rediscover the motherboard components and divers. or better yet do the acer alt+10 trick and just factory reinstall, which actually would be the same as swapping the drive I guess. I could try to make a disk from the old machine and use the new HDD in the new machine but boot from the CD and try to put the old computer vista on it. which is the same thing too tho.

32bit is backwards compatible with a 64bit uP. is it really because the MB components are different that it won't allow the computer to see the partition? what if I had a vista CD? it's won't boot because it's trying to use another computers settings?

also the problem with my old acer is that it restarts randomly. at first I thought it was the power outlet. and it's not like a normal restart. it's like it loses power and trys to reboot but can't do it unless I unplug it and back in. It happens when playing games or the graphics gets a little heavier. but if I leave it on all night doing nothing it doesn't reboot. I tested the memory with the windows memory diagnostic tool but that seems ok. there's only 2 dims but I didn't test each one on it's own. so im guess it's either the video card or power supply. but I also thought when power supplies go it's all or nothing? the video card is on board, but I could buy one I think it has a slot.

any idea?

[johnnya24]

Do you mean the 32 bit version of windows or that your HDD had a FAT32 file system? Neither should really matter. The file system of the old drive might be different, but even then, you can have different file systems on multiple drives and they should all be detected just fine (FAT32 was the much older file system, NFTS is the "newer" standard ... if you can call the 1990's newer )

What are you trying to do? Run the Vista install from the old PC on the new PC? If so, why?

Generally that won't work as the drivers will be set to the old motherboard, and even if it does, you can expect some instability in your future (and it sounds like you already have some). However, it should read the drive just fine, so you should be able to access the drive.

I'm assuming you are using SATA slots for both drives as new PCs don't have the older IDE slots anymore (if your new PC still has an IDE slot, I'd be worried about what you've bought). Put the new drive with the W8 install to the SATA 1 slot, and the other to SATA 2. That should make the old drive a data drive. It shouldn't matter if it had a 32 bit install of Vista, as the Vista install will now be archived in a "Windows Old" folder on your "D" drive.

[nullnor]

they are both NTFS. and im trying to run a vista installed on an older computer on this one. I know i'll have problems later, but it should at least try to boot. since they are both acers the hardware is mostly the same. both western digital sata drives only differences are size speed and what OS is on them. the old one has an 8mb cache and the new one 64mb. but that shouldn't make a difference. I don't think I saw speed of the hdd as an option in the bios. the reason I want to use vista is that the game NFL head coach 06 won't run on 8. at least that's what've read. im downloading and gonna try but I doubt it even after doing compatibility things. and I like the old mcafee firewall to this new one on 8. and I like vista better. swapping performance for familiarity.

whats the difference. there is a partition and the bios listed the right drive. yet it give me a no boot device error. the only difference is that when you go into the bios and select what type of drive the new one says boot menu (I forget the exact option) and the old one gives me the choice to enable as either an SATA or AHCI (I forget, I could swap drive again and see) or an IDE. it's not IDE. I don't even know what AHCI stands for that's new to me.

in the old days you just pop in a dos disk and even if the drive isn't partitioned fdisk found it. also, I do actually have some old IDE drives laying around. I wonder if I formatted the old SATA disk with vista on it and installed it, would the new computer.. it would still say no bootable device as it sees the HDD but not windows.

you know I bet if I made a factory install recovery of the new computer on a flash drive and put the old hdd in and booted from the flash drive it would see the old hdd. just trying to figure out what that means I can do in reverse.

[nullnor]

I only have 1 drive in at a time. not trying to recover data, just trying to migrate an os. I think they made it harder to do these days.

[johnnya24]

It's unlikely you will get the old version of Vista to run on the new board. You normally need to do a fresh install, especially with older OS's. You will probably have to reinstall Vista fresh, or perform some kind of recovery to make it communicate with the new board (I never do this as it's not worth the effort).

I would not recommend using Vista over W8 just for an old non-compatible game, that just seems like a waste. Then again, if you really love that game.

W8 is good and very stable,a nd if you download the mods that add the Start button etc you get a familiar Windows user experience ... and of course you will get a cheaper upgrade to Windows 10 (as it's being called) when that is released. Vista is really clunky ... it's not worth it ... get rid of that crap! W7 is still great, Vista, not so much.

[johnnya24]

I only have 1 drive in at a time. not trying to recover data, just trying to migrate an os. I think they made it harder to do these days.

Not worth the effort bro. You'd be better off putting your Vista HDD another PC and keeping that just for the game. You could build an old Vista PC for a $100 ... cheaper if you still have some usable parts from your old PC. Plus, then you'll have a spare.

[nullnor]

I guess my options are,

get a vista cd. but will it actually identify all the things on a computer 6 years older.

fix the old computer. or get an new old one with vista.

resort to the warez. http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/...-head-coach-3/ I see there they seem to be able to run the game on 64bit o/s. but then the game is glitchy enough as it is.

as long as I make a backup flash drive of the new computer with 8, I can try anything I guess. I am hesitant to hose it tho until I know I can do that.

[nullnor]

Not worth the effort bro. You'd be better off putting your Vista HDD another PC and keeping that just for the game. You could build an old Vista PC for a $100 ... cheaper if you still have some usable parts from your old PC. Plus, then you'll have a spare.

yup that's what I figured but I wanted to make sure. it is cheaper. and if I only used that computer for that game it would last forever. I could be the greatest coach of all time!

it is weird you can't just swap drives anymore. but you really can't.