I don’t want to ask in the wrong place, so clue me if I’m wrong.
I have a mechanically broke down lenovo laptop that still functions. Broken hinge, likely a small crack in the screen, power plugin wobbly and other stuff. I found a same model number laptop, used of course, but it has differences… A lower level cpu and stuff. similar but different. The ad also says “No SSD _ No OPERATING SYSTEM” The ad does show an InsydeH20 image on the screen of the laptop. This showing that it works?
My old mechanically broke down laptop, essentially from a computing standpoint anyway, still works fine.
I wonder if I could take my SSD out of the old laptop and swap it into the ‘new’ laptop, thus getting everything working again but in a mechanically sound device.
What say gurus?
I know I hardly ever post here, but trust me, I’m here almost every day reading. And once I create this topic, “I’ll be back.”
If the old laptop is running Windows I believe you’ll have licensing issues. The original OS is likely an OEM version which cannot be transferred from one system to another. If it happens to be a retail version, you’re allowed to do it, but it will likely have to be re-activated on the new machine.
Cite that please? It does not sound correct to me. He’s keeping it on the same model and not trying to run both. This worked fine in the past on both a Dell and an HP. Admittedly, they were Win 7 computers.
Damn, it looks like with Win 10 & 11 that is correct for OEM versions. Not transferable.
You can check your version by bringing up the CMD prompt w/ Admin rights and typing in: slmgr /dlv, hit enter.
Thanks all for the replies. I hope I can keep up with all this.
It’s a Win 10 laptop. I recently got a new Win 11 laptop and got some local guru to manually copy stuff from the old to the new. A little bit messy to say the least. Frankly, I hates Win 11.
So sadly, @wolfpup is correct and if the Win 10 license is OEM you cannot transfer it. Also as Win 10 is mostly dead as of October 2025, probably not worth the hassle for 6 months.
Dprk, I would get an external SSD drive hooked up and clone the entirety of the old laptop into that new SSD before I did anything else. That is, if I knew how to do it.
You can’t transfer an OEM license, but if the new machine is actually authorized for exactly the same version of Windows (Windows 10, Home, Professional, or whatever) and has the same motherboard, then it may well work, in the same way as if you were re-installing the original OS that came with it. If it was not an original Windows machine with the same version and edition of Windows, nope.
Same model number laptop, maybe the same physical dimensions motherboard too, but different level cpu and other stuff like that. If the ‘new’ old laptop would accept the entire motherboard out of the mechanically broken laptop, I would still have to contend with a broke down battery recharge port (which might be a real easy fix) and one speaker that isn’t working anymore and I don’t know why because that might be a problem ‘upstream’ from the speaker itself.
It certainly works with both Dell and Lenovo computers with embedded licences. I’m telling you as the guy who has 40 employees with laptops that I manage.