How do I move a windows installation hdd to a new computer? [duplicate]

This always happens to me. Every time I try to move a hard drive to a new computer, I always get boot errors. So I go on my windows recovery dvd and do bootrec.exe /fixboot and bootrec /fixmbr and bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd. It should be that simple right? Well it's not. That never works for me. I still continue to get the boot error and the only way I can make a hdd work on a new machine is by formatting it.

How do I move a windows installation to a new pc without having to format it? I'm giving my old pc to my friend for their birthday. I took the dvd drive out of it and put it in my new pc because I only had one. I'm gonna buy another but for the time being there isnt a dvd drive and I dont want to take the drive out of my pc. so what I'm trying to do is put a hard drive in my pc and then install windows to that hard drive and then move the hard drive to the old pc.

But I know once I do that, I'll get boot errors because I know its looking for the other hard drives as well but it wont find them. And then as mentioned above I run those commands and the problem still persists. And besides I cant even run the commands once I put the hdd into the old pc because theres no dvd drive. I could make a recovery usb but I see no point because those commands never fix the boot.

Whats the proper way to do this?

Solution 1:

The proper way to do this is sysprep or System Preparation.

Here's what you need to do:

C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown

This:

• Enters the Out Of Box Experience state
• Generalizes the OS, removing PC specific HW IDs
• Shuts the PC down once finished