Windows to new PC

Being tight and swapping out my PC parts to build one for my son. I have an old laptop that I put a Ssd in.

Can I take the drive out and put in a new PC build, then use the Windows license on the new PC.

And put a normal HD for doing everything other than Windows?

Or do I have to pay £120 for a new one?

You could do a fresh install on the SSD and purchase a £4 licence key from EBay, or not even bother. I upgraded a Vista laptop to Windows 10, 10 months ago using the official windows software, never bothered to activate it, apparently some functions are disabled, nothing I use, and theres a barely noticeable watermark in the bottom right of the screen reminding me to activate windows. All seems to work no problem.

Can I take the drive out and put in a new PC build, then use the Windows license on the new PC.

It will detect that you have changed the machine and will not activate properly. It’s not impossible that you’ll be able to get it activated by phone, but I think you’re going to have to buy a new licence.

Thanks, a few options 🙂

Can I take the drive out and put in a new PC build

Yes.

then use the Windows license on the new PC.

No.

And put a normal HD for doing everything other than Windows?

Yes.

Or do I have to pay £120 for a new one?

No.

If you want more useful answers you’ll need to elaborate on what versions of Windows all of these before-and-after configurations were running. If it’s Windows 10 throughout including the new-build motherboard then licensing is an irrelevance, it should just work. Anything else adds complications, you most likely won’t have to buy a new licence but we’re now into the realms of guesswork as your OP is vague.

also thanks Cougar,

I will check the version of windows tomorrow.

👍

Adding to this to save starting a new thread. I have a 4 year old Lenovo laptop with a dying hard drive (clicking and chkdsk finds new errors every day, I do a repair, it runs fine for about 1 hr and then starts slowingf down and 100% disk for 5 mins with nothing happening)

q’s then:
1) If I clone my hard drive, will the new drive just work with original licence?
2) Or should I copy the data I want and do a new install?
3) If I do a new install will it need a new licence?

I installed a SSD in an older, licensed, PC then did a clean install of Windows. I didn’t need a new license. If it makes any difference, I made sure I had a valid Microsoft login ID before doing so.

I kept the data on my old HDD then copied it over to the SSD. It’s nice to clean out old Windows stuff once in a while anyway.

yes this sounds like the smart thing to do.
Where do you get the windows for a clean install?

If I do a new install will it need a new licence?

No. The activation process will recognize that the machine is licenced.

Where do you get the windows for a clean install?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Boom you lot rock. Cheers.

Windows 10 pro

Backup up and restore says (Windows 7)

Laptop will be 10 years old. Son is 10 next week, I tripped up the stairs the night he was born and cracked the two day laptop case. Nowt to do with the Windows issue though 😃

Also- when does a component upgrade become a new PC?

Also- when does a component upgrade become a new PC?

I think it will depend on the licence. Last time I bought a licence was for Win8, so I’m not sure what the situation is now.

The most expensive licence is a consumer licence for people like gamers who constantly upgrade their machines. That can be shifted to a new machine without any problems.

Next is a consumer licence that is locked to a single machine. You can upgrade the machine, but there are limits to how many components you can upgrade within a time period. So, you might be able to put in a new motherboard, or a new graphics card, or a new HDD, but not all at the same time. However, apparently MS are pretty lenient about this and you can do the phone licensing thing to have it reactivated if you have problems.

Then there are OEM licences that large manufacturers buy. I think these are locked to specific hardware configurations, so you won’t be able to take a hard disk from a laptop and activate it on a completely different machine because the hardware configuration won’t match.

Oh, motherboard, ram, CPU and GPU upgrade this weekend 😐😃

1) If I clone my hard drive, will the new drive just work with original licence?

Yes.

2) Or should I copy the data I want and do a new install?

Yes.

3) If I do a new install will it need a new licence?

No.

Windows 10 (and indeed anything post-7) licensing is tied to your motherboard (and if you sign in with a MS account it’s also registered to your account). Changing drives in a PC is an abject irrelevance from a licence POV.

Backup up and restore says (Windows 7)

You can likely forget that being any use then.

Ok, Amazon or via Amazon have home edition for £28, I’ll just get two of them and put new on the two “new” PCs.

Thanks for all the input.

Swapped the motherboard, GPU, RAM and CPU. Switched the power on and it booted exactly as before. Updated Nvidia and MSI drivers but nothing for Windows. No requests for any changes.

As mentioned above for the old laptop the upgraded PC has the same

“Windows 10 pro

Backup up and restore says (Windows 7)”

for the Windows version currently installed.

Issues with a few bits of software, Rfactor 2 keeps going to black screen with sound and Forza 7 similar. But Iracing and ACC on full settings playing amazingly well.