Avoid reinstalling everything after hardware upgrades


  1. Linoleum77
    Posts : 2
    Windows 10 Home
       New #1

    Avoid reinstalling everything after hardware upgrades


    On July 29th, I upgrade my 8.1 installation to windows 10 without too much problem and was properly activated. However, few days ago, I upgraded my computer with a new motherboard, CPU and RAM... I kept everything as is on my hard drive, including my windows installation. All the drivers updated in less than 5 minutes and I was back on track. However, I noticed my windows 10 installation wasn't activated anymore. Tried all the "online" solutions around (waiting, SLUI 3, SLUI 4, etc).


    I later read on a MS support page that, when installing or upgrading from 8 to 10, it basically takes a fingerprint of your hardware on their server...


    So here's my question. Since I don't want to reinstall everything, can I...


    1) unplug my W10 (unactivated) hard drive
    2) use another hard drive to install a version of windows 8 on it
    3) upgrade it to windows 10 to have my new hardware fingerprints on MS server
    4) then revert back to my initial W10 hard drive


    Since all it needs is a upgrade from 8 to with the new hardware, I figured this could theoritically work.
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  3. topgundcp
    Posts : 2,799
    Linux Mint 20.1 Win10Prox64
       New #2

    Yes, it should work once you have the new hardware with Win 10 upgraded from Win 8 activated.

    NOTE: You need to re-activate Win 8 first before upgrade to Win 10.
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  4. Linoleum77
    Posts : 2
    Windows 10 Home
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Success!! The described steps in my initial post worked! So no need to spend 4 days backing up and reinstalling everything!
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