Dell SSD upgrade

Thankyou for being straight up, the best option as you suggested is a clean install, as it boots faster and there's no let overs to screw things up. I just need to find out about the license details, before I commit to buying the Dell. The setup on the SSD is only about 6 months old and was hoping it would just slot it with a minimum of fuss, but I guess MS aren't going to make life that easy are they.

To Bree, thanks for the heads up on that manual, I'll follow that up.

Thanks to all that have responded and I hope you all have a merry xmas

Reggie49

Why not try moving the existing install to the new computer and see how it works? Then if you are not happy with results, do the clean install. You can do a clean install at any time.

most times it will work i have done several times before, it should reactivate fine since its tied to your email the license key now. at most you will need to install the motherboard and dell drivers , but all in all you should be a ok. windows 10 is pretty forgiving in a since, lots better then old windows 7 and 8. give it a shot you have nothing to loose.

Reggie49 said:

... I just need to find out about the license details, before I commit to buying the Dell.

If you can find out the service tag of the Dell then enter that at the Dell support site you can look up the original configuration it was shipped with, including which version of Windows (Home or Pro). A machine built for Windows 8 or later will also have a key embedded in its bios firmware, ShowKeyPlus can show you that key and tell you what version it is for.

If it has been running Windows 10 before, then it will already have a digital licence for that version (Home or Pro) stored on Microsoft's activation servers and linked to the hardware ID of the PC. If you put in a drive with the same version of W10 then it will activate from the PC's existing digital licence.

The setup on the SSD is only about 6 months old and was hoping it would just slot it with a minimum of fuss, but I guess MS aren't going to make life that easy are they.

You'd be surprised, Windows 10 is remarkably good at adapting to new hardware it finds itself running on. After swapping a drive to dissimilar hardware on first boot you will see a screen saying 'setting up drivers'. When that's done it will restart and boot normally into Windows. I've done that a few times and never had a problem.

It was mentioned what OS it was shipped with, As the Latitude line is Dell's business "workstation" line, many of these are shipped with no OS installed and the corporate disc image is installed after the company gets them. Or, the PC is shipped with a Dell OEM OS but it is never activated as the corporate disc image is installed and used.

Lance1 said:

If only my DELL Inspiron 17R N7110 SSD upgrade was that easy...

Hmm, I see what you mean....


Get the Dell Inspiron 17R N7110 Service Manual as a pdf here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...17r-n7110/docs

Dell said:

...
2 Remove the battery ....
3 Follow the instructions from step 3 to step 4 in "Removing the Optical Drive"...
4 Remove the keyboard...
5 Remove the palm-rest assembly...
6 Remove the three screws that secure the hard-drive assembly...

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/a...nual_en-us.pdf

W10 Tweaker said:

For a real hoot, try repasting the CPU. My Dell Studio 1747 project was horrendous.

Replaced 2 sata drives in 2 different ASUS laptops, q504uak got an SSD, q525uar got an NVME
Both easy, remove bottom cover, pull off the SSD attach new one. On one of them 2 screws are under the rubber cushion pad.

On my q525uar, I left the SSD drive as a second win10 boot drive, nice that it supports the NVME drive in that model.