W510 Windows upgrades fail
Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2026 9:55 pm
I'm trying to solve a problem in one of two ways. The issue is that I need to migrate a system from a W510 to a W520 to make use of the 520's memory. The Silverfast application simply locks up with only 8GB.
I've tried two things:
Swapping hard drives
--------------------------
The W520 (i7) system will boot and run on the W510 (i5). It updates some drivers and runs fine.
The W510 system drive on the W520 crashes with a BSOD 7B This says boot problem. At first I thought it was the HDD driver but something leads me to believe it may be the chipset software. The W520 has support for the i5 but the 510 doesn't know anything about the i7. I tried booting safe mode. No go. Then I tried booting on the 510 and installing the Intel Chipset Driver package. That didn't help - got the same BSOD.
I thought safe mode would always work because it only used basic cpu features. Doesn't seem to...
Any ideas on what might be missing?
I tried all sorts of methods of restoring the windows software using F8 and repair. No help...
I also tried to repair by installing Windows 7 from a real Windows 7 disc that I got to upgrade another machine years ago. I expect this disc also knows about the W520 chipset and wanted to find a way to install over a corrupted version, but you can't do that booting from the CD - only by running the update app under windows. Sigh...
Upgrade to Windows 10
----------------------------
So today I had another idea. If chipset support is the issue the Windows 10 should have them all. So I factory restored the 510 from the CD/DVD. Then ran the Windows 10 upgrade. The first time I used the Win10 IOS image that I "created" today because I infer that it is the very last with all the updates already installed.
The result was a Win10 system that on the 520 ran just fine. Except it wasn't "activated". I had done this before on the 520 using the same handling and the Windows 10 was activated. This was done when the upgrade from 7 to 10 was "free".
Win10 will not activate using the Win7 product key inside the battery compartment...
It asked for a horrendously long "instance ID" or something like that that also wouldn't work.
I thought it might work if I used the 2019 DVD but that also left Win10 "unactivated".
So Question #2: Is there a way to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and have an activated windows? This used to work, in fact, many years after MS said they would. But by withdrawing it they are removing the ability to recover systems. I would hope that Microsoft wouldn't take it away from those of us that have used it in the past and are restoring a system from a crashed HDD.
I would much prefer the first alternative though: If I can get the 510 drive to run on the 520 with all my applications intact that is ideal.
If worse comes to worse I can just go back to the W520, factory restore it onto a new HDD and manually reinstall all the one-off software bits that I've accumulated over the years.
Thanks!
Still on the search for a new "every day machine" and can't find any with a SD card...
I've tried two things:
Swapping hard drives
--------------------------
The W520 (i7) system will boot and run on the W510 (i5). It updates some drivers and runs fine.
The W510 system drive on the W520 crashes with a BSOD 7B This says boot problem. At first I thought it was the HDD driver but something leads me to believe it may be the chipset software. The W520 has support for the i5 but the 510 doesn't know anything about the i7. I tried booting safe mode. No go. Then I tried booting on the 510 and installing the Intel Chipset Driver package. That didn't help - got the same BSOD.
I thought safe mode would always work because it only used basic cpu features. Doesn't seem to...
Any ideas on what might be missing?
I tried all sorts of methods of restoring the windows software using F8 and repair. No help...
I also tried to repair by installing Windows 7 from a real Windows 7 disc that I got to upgrade another machine years ago. I expect this disc also knows about the W520 chipset and wanted to find a way to install over a corrupted version, but you can't do that booting from the CD - only by running the update app under windows. Sigh...
Upgrade to Windows 10
----------------------------
So today I had another idea. If chipset support is the issue the Windows 10 should have them all. So I factory restored the 510 from the CD/DVD. Then ran the Windows 10 upgrade. The first time I used the Win10 IOS image that I "created" today because I infer that it is the very last with all the updates already installed.
The result was a Win10 system that on the 520 ran just fine. Except it wasn't "activated". I had done this before on the 520 using the same handling and the Windows 10 was activated. This was done when the upgrade from 7 to 10 was "free".
Win10 will not activate using the Win7 product key inside the battery compartment...
It asked for a horrendously long "instance ID" or something like that that also wouldn't work.
I thought it might work if I used the 2019 DVD but that also left Win10 "unactivated".
So Question #2: Is there a way to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and have an activated windows? This used to work, in fact, many years after MS said they would. But by withdrawing it they are removing the ability to recover systems. I would hope that Microsoft wouldn't take it away from those of us that have used it in the past and are restoring a system from a crashed HDD.
I would much prefer the first alternative though: If I can get the 510 drive to run on the 520 with all my applications intact that is ideal.
If worse comes to worse I can just go back to the W520, factory restore it onto a new HDD and manually reinstall all the one-off software bits that I've accumulated over the years.
Thanks!
Still on the search for a new "every day machine" and can't find any with a SD card...