Aspire 5 A515-56-36UT changing boot drive to SATA SSD i/o default NVMe SSD

JetSkiJunky

Purchased as new computer for my young son. Previously had old Acer V3-571G running Windows 10. Hardware failures caused ethernet to drop constantly and wifi adapter to not work, likely because of its age and incompatibility with Windows10. He needs solid network for virtual schooling.

I thought this would be an easy process, but its not. Thought I could simply pull the old drive out, install in this, go into BIOS and select the drive as the startup and it would recognize just fine. Have done it dozens of times in the last 20 years. I was mistaken. It appears with this A515, its using UEFI bootloader, but I swore the other computer was set up the same.

How can I get this new laptop to recognize the existing Windows 10 install thats on this SATA SSD and boot from that? Do I have to use BCDBOOT/BCDEDIT in terminal and edit the details? The drive is recognized in the BIOS, and mounts as drive E:  I can see the windows directory on it, and can see its boot directory with EFI directory. (exact same structure as whats on the NVMe SSD)

I really wanted to be able to just put his old drive in this, set the bios, and not even bother with this Windows 11. Just boot up like its his old computer, but with the new hardware. Maybe some driver updates I would have to do, but there's gotta be a way to do this...

Thanks for any guidance that you can provide...

Commodore_1995#

I understand what you are trying to do. However, it is very likely that you will not be able to succeed, due to incompatibility of drivers and chipset. Before, it would be interesting to backup the personal files that are on the hard disk of the v3-571g model, just in case.

Now, what could be preventing the v3-571g model hard drive from booting, is the fact that vmd controller is enabled in bios and fast startup is enabled in power options. Do it:
a) Disconnect the Lition battery first and then disconnect the hard drive from v3-571 which you connected to a515-56;
b) reconnect the battery and turn on the computer;
c) go to power options and disable fast startup:

d) press windows+r, type msconfig, go to system boot and enable safe boot:

e) restart windows and access the bios, pressing f2 before the Acer logo;
f) go to main tab, press ctrl+s and disable vmd controller:

g) press f10 to save and exit and windows will be booted by safe boot. Now, disable safe boot and turn off the computer;
h) Disconnect the Lition battery and connect the v3-571g hard drive, which needs to be in gpt to be recognized.