Moving windows after motherboard and CPU upgrade

Crumble85 · 28 Dec 2021 at 23:03

Hey guys,

I bought my PC from OC - they built it for me custom - now three years down the line I've ordered a new mobo and cpu and case - moving from intel to AMD. Keeping the same SSD and GPU and RAM.

How do I do a fresh install of Windows on the new 'machine'.

I purchased Win10 Home preinstalled from OC also.

Many thanks for your advice.

Grimley · 29 Dec 2021 at 04:14

Hello

You will not be able to transfer your windows installation from the old to the new machine. You need to download the Windows ISO from Microsoft & install it onto a compatible USB flash drive (8GB should be large enough)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

You will need to buy a activation key as well if OCUK installed an OEM version of Windows on your old machine (most likely) if it is a retail version then you could (No guarantee of that) activate the new Windows installation with your Microsoft account if you have done that on your old machine but you will need to deactivate & remove the old machine off your Microsoft account first. Its easier to buy an OEM Activation key though.

edscdk · 29 Dec 2021 at 05:15

98% chance it will boot and work, might be a good opertunirty to do a clen install though..

bimbleuk · 29 Dec 2021 at 06:31

Try it because Windows 10 is very good at detecting new hardware. Worked just fine for me going from AMD platform to Intel platform last week.

If it keeps blue screening and rebooting. Let it reboot 3 times and it should let you select the recovery options. If you can select boot in safe mode that will also help windows swap hardware.

However I would always recommend a fresh install after backing up any data to get maximum benefit from the system refresh.