Upgrading mobo & CPU for Win 10 upgrade help please

[RampantMark]

Our home PC is old.
Too old/not compatible with Win10 (Z97 mobo and Haswell i5 CPU).

So I have a plan and have already bought some hardware (to upgrade ny own gaming rig)...

The hardware for this home machine will be updated by installing the setup being removed in toto from my gaming PC: Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite; Ryzen 5 2600X; 16Gb Vengeance 3000C16.

Clearly, the Aorus BIOS is up to date and working at the moment with the installed R5 CPU.

My questions are as follows -

1. When I place this hardware in an old case and hook up the current SSD Win7 boot drive (& larger data hard drive) - will the system boot OK into Windows 7?

2. Assuming it works and boots up, will the update from Win7 to Win10 then be straightforward enough?


I half expect this system will refuse to boot properly from a current and up to date Win 7 image, and therefore to need some other funky kind of Windows update to be required to get it back to a working condition!

Thanks in advance for any wisdom you can throw my way.

 

[m4cc45]

Windows 7 is not like Windows 10. It 'may' boot up but it's unlikely. Windows 10 you'd have a good chance with but Windows 7 I'd be doubtful as you're changing everything.

I'm just wondering why you don't just go straight to Windows 10? You'll have a much better experience just going straight to 10 and reinstalling your stuff.



M.

 

[RampantMark]

Windows 7 is not like Windows 10. It 'may' boot up but it's unlikely. Windows 10 you'd have a good chance with but Windows 7 I'd be doubtful as you're changing everything.

I'm just wondering why you don't just go straight to Windows 10? You'll have a much better experience just going straight to 10 and reinstalling your stuff.


M.

Honestly, I don't relish the idea of all that extra time spent reinstalling everything from scratch. Plus I don't know how validation keys work if this is going to be an upgrade from a validated Win7 install.
Will I be able to use the existing and validated Win7 key to validate the new Win10 install?

 

[m4cc45]

If you've already done the upgrade then it's probably tied to the old motherboard. If not then I believe, but I've never tried, you can use your Windows 7 key.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/wi...ill-clean-install-windows-10-windows-78-x-key

To install Windows 10, on a half decent system, will take about 15 minutes. Updates won't take long. Software install will take a little time but once you have it all installed you can use something like:

https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html

To make an image so that you don't have to do it again.


M.

 

[RampantMark]

So here's the potential issue. Win7 is installed and activated on the old machine. I can't upgrade to Win10 because the hardware is too old.

Ideally I want to boot into this version of Win7 with new hardware that is Win 10 compatible, and then perform the upgrade from there. This I understand will activate with the old key. Or is that not how it works?

 

[wiiija]

You will struggle with that, iirc Windows 7 was not good when updating hardware, it will just fail to boot. 10 just takes care of it on boot and won't usually be a problem, sorry I don't have much to add, personally and I know you don't really want to, but I would just reinstall fresh.

 

[RampantMark]

You will struggle with that, iirc Windows 7 was not good when updating hardware, it will just fail to boot. 10 just takes care of it on boot and won't usually be a problem, sorry I don't have much to add, personally and I know you don't really want to, but I would just reinstall fresh.

And would that likely mean that I need a new key to activate the Win10 install?

 

[wiiija]

You could probably still use your windows 7 key I believe, alternatively just pick up a cheap win10 one on the auction site, they work fine.