Kind of a weird situation with Windows laptops.

[Deleted User]

Ok, I can't quite understand this situation. I will try to be as brief as possible.
So, my aunt has 2 laptops.
I've seen one of them, it's pretty old. The other one remains a mystery to me. I remember the one I do have seen having it's HardDrive partitioned in 4 or something like that (can't tell exactly for obvious reasons)
My aunt told me today that, she wanted to "put together" the memory of her older lap.
So, she gave it to my cousin who's apparently an software engineer (last time I saw him was when I was 5 years old or so... now I'm 25... I just don't care)
Then, according to my aunt's words... what he did to her laptops was this:

"He took the memory of my old laptop, and put it in the other one. Now I can't browse Spotify or Netflix because I don't have an Antivirus, and now my laptop is slow"

Like... she's saying that my cousin took the Hard Drive of the old laptop, and put "parts of its memory" to the other one. I just told her that that was impossible.
What he must've done is partitioned the memory of her laptop and he just said to her that he "passed" the memory from one to another.

Now, the next week she'll bring her two laptops to see if I can fix them.
She says that, her oldest laptop has Windows 7 and the one with the added chunk of memory runs Windows XP.

Now I'm asking you guys, if this situation is possible... I really doubt it... but hey, anything can happen, I hadn't seen my cousin in 20+ years and he's a software engineer
While I...
I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me
I'm just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare me my life from this monstrosity

Ok, so... what's the most probable situation here?

 

[Ryccardo]

A typical OEM windows 8/10 installation will typically be 4 or even 5 partitions out of the box: EFI, Windows "system" (bootloader), MSR (empty filler space for future software raid/bitlocker), C:, and recovery images/WIMboot

It is indeed possible to move an HDD with Windows to another computer (after running a sysprep /generalize, to force all hardware detection to be repeated on next boot), but it's not a very smart idea (or excessively known, at least for those older versions of Windows that usually require said command; newer ones can usually adapt themselves even without), and it would certainly need installing all drivers of the new PC afterwards; and while a PC made in ~2010 would most likely have XP drivers for at least its major components, by that year it was already a second-class target for certain driver programmers...
Additionally, some "drivers" (not actual .inf drivers; but hotkey software and the like) of the old PC may still be loading for no or negative benefit!

It's also possible that he made a virtual machine


The best course of action for computers in an unknown state is a manual file backup to an external drive, wipe, and clean reinstall (taking the opportunity to switch to SSD or at least 7200-speed HDD - they really help perceived performance, and I say that as I use a 2007 laptop as my main computer). I guess you could interpret "passed parts of its memory" as doing exactly this?

Now I can't browse Spotify or Netflix because I don't have an Antivirus

lol wut

 

[Deleted User]

It's also possible that he made a virtual machine
The best course of action for computers in an unknown state is a manual file backup to an external drive, wipe, and clean reinstall (taking the opportunity to switch to SSD or at least 7200-speed HDD - they really help perceived performance, and I say that as I use a 2007 laptop as my main computer). I guess you could interpret "passed parts of its memory" as doing exactly this?

That's another possibility I've already thought of.
But... I guess I'll have to actually see them to know exactly what's the problem.
She mentioned that he told her that she could just buy an external hard drive. I told her that that'd be expensive and that it'll be a hit or miss situation.

PS; Yes... nowadays computers are only used for Spotify, Facebook and Netflix. What... were you living under a rock all these years? She says that there's a pop-up telling her to download Something-something-ware in order to keep her protected on Chrome.
I told her that it'll be easier to update to Windows 10.
Or buy an old & cheap but new Windows 7 laptop.

 

[Originality]

Wouldn’t surprise me if an old laptop is slow because of random stuff installed without people realising. Such as adware or scareware.