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Attempt to boot Win10 laptop into Vista wrecks primary OS

600 Views 8 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  simr, 
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I removed a working hard drive from a slow (and constantly overheating) laptop, hooked it up to a Windows 10 laptop with this, and it was indeed recognized and picked up by the new computer as an external drive. I subsequently changed the bios boot order to "USB" first, but the laptop then failed to boot into the Vista drive/OS. I then reverted the boot order and the computer reverted to booting the regular way without issue. I then tried to change the bios boot order again to the Vista drive and it failed a second time, but this time I selected a repair option from the on-screen prompt which failed as well. After that, when attempting to boot the regular way (after reverting the bios again) an error came up (image attached).

1) Why can't a Windows 10 laptop boot into a working Vista hard drive?
2) Why would an on-screen repair option provided to boot into the Vista drive somehow wreck the primary Windows 10 hard drive/OS?
3) Will using a recovery USB to repair the computer (via this method) wipe documents and files from the primary Windows 10 hard drive/OS? (Needless to say, the Vista hard drive has already been disconnected and wouldn't be connected during a system recovery.)

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lunarlander
You create the USB as the link explains. Then you boot with it and on the second screen choose Repair. That will bring up a troubleshooter, find Startup Repair inside that menu.
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lunarlander said:
You create the USB as the link explains. Then you boot with it and on the second screen choose Repair. That will bring up a troubleshooter, find Startup Repair inside that menu.
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Thanks.

simr said:
1) Why can't a Windows 10 laptop boot into a working Vista hard drive?
2) Why would an on-screen repair option provided to boot into the Vista drive somehow wreck the primary Windows 10 hard drive/OS?
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Anyone?
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TerryNet
simr said:
1) Why can't a Windows 10 laptop boot into a working Vista hard drive?
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There is a greater than 99% probability that there are no drivers for a "Windows 10 laptop." And even if there are some they won't be in the installed Vista since Windows was not installed on the newer hardware. It (the Vista on the old drive) will have the drivers needed to run on the old hardware.

simr said:
2) Why would an on-screen repair option provided to boot into the Vista drive somehow wreck the primary Windows 10 hard drive/OS?
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I do not know for sure but my considered guess is that the "repair" was done to the boot on the Windows 10 hard drive instead of to the Vista boot.
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TerryNet said:
There is a greater than 99% probability that there are no drivers for a "Windows 10 laptop." And even if there are some they won't be in the installed Vista since Windows was not installed on the newer hardware. It (the Vista on the old drive) will have the drivers needed to run on the old hardware.
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Aren't drivers located on the hard drive together with the OS and all the other files? So why wouldn't the drivers still be on the Vista hard drive when connecting it to another laptop?

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Another question, can recovery media be copied from one USB to another by dragging and dropping? (The benefit of that would be that the second USB won't need to be formatted and have its contents erased for the recovery media to be there.)
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TerryNet
You misunderstood me. According to what I understand you have the Vista installation (including, of course, the drivers for the old motherboard and devices) set up to boot and run on the old hardware. It is extremely unlikely that the "Windows 10 laptop" includes the same motherboard and devices, hence needs an entirely different set of drivers.
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TerryNet said:
According to what I understand you have the Vista installation (including, of course, the drivers for the old motherboard and devices) set up to boot and run on the old hardware.
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If by "hardware" you mean the physical hard drive that the Vista OS is on, then yes, I connected it using this to a Windows 10 laptop. So Windows 10 isn't backwards compatible with older Windows versions? Put differently, an older OS can't boot with the help of a newer motherboard and hardware, but must exclusively have the old ones?
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TerryNet
simr said:
If by "hardware" you mean the physical hard drive that the Vista OS is on
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Hardware includes mainly the motherboard, secondarily many of the integrated devices (graphics card, network adapters, audio, etc.) and thirdly maybe some peripherals (e.g., USB mouse).

simr said:
an older OS can't boot with the help of a newer motherboard and hardware, but must exclusively have the old ones?
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Not necessarily. In general Windows must be installed on the computer on which it is intended to run. Trying to boot it on a different computer (even just a different motherboard) usually does not work unless the hardware is very similar. The age of the hardware is not necessarily an issue. However, if you check you'll probably discover that there are few if any Vista drivers for your "Windows 10 laptop."
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Thank you.

simr said:
Another question, can recovery media be copied from one USB to another by dragging and dropping? (The benefit of that would be that the second USB won't need to be formatted and have its contents erased for the recovery media to be there.)
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Does anyone have any insight into this?
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