Moving a Windows 7-installed hard disk to a new computer

This has been documented elsewhere, but it’s important enough to have a note about here.

In short, before switching to a new hardware, it’s essential to prepare it, or an 0x0000007b blue screen will occur on the new hardware.

The trick is to run sysprep.exe (under windows\system32\sysprep\) before the transition. Have “Generalize” checked, and choose “shutdown” at the end of the operation (“Shutdown Options”).

Once the computer shuts down, move the hard disk to the new computer. Windows should boot smoothly, and start a series of installation stages, including feeding the license key and language settings. Also, an account needs to be created. This account can be deleted afterwards, as the old account is kept. Quite silly, as a matter of fact.