If I am understanding all of the aboce correctly, if I were to image the system disk of Computer A, and restore it to the HDD on Computer B, and even if I had them both connected to the internet, that would be no problem because the already existing digital licence for Computer B would be recognised as valid by the activation servers?
Is this correct?
Yes. They need to be the same edition, in your case they are both Pro so it will be fine.
Yes. Activation has changed dramatically starting with Windows 10, and for the better. In XP (and W7 and W8) the installed key is the most important determinant of whether the OS activates.
In Windows 10 (and 11) the key is only ever needed once, when used to install Windows 10 on a PC that has never had it installed before. When the key is checked and found to be valid and not used before then a digital licence is created on the Microsoft activation servers for the edition that was installed (Home of Pro) and linked to the unique Hardware ID of the PC (a hardware hash that does not include the hard drive).
It is important to understand that the digital licence for any PC does NOT have any record of the key that was used to create it.
Once a PC has a digital licence the key is never needed again. You can reinstall Windows 10 (or 11, the digital licence is the same for both) and skip entering a key when asked. Windows will install with the generic key (VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T for Pro). Virtually every PC in the world that has had a clean install, or got an upgrade from W7/8, will now have a generic key.
It doesn't matter that multiple PCs use the same generic key, there is no confusion. The only thing that matters is: what is the unique hardware ID of this PC? Does it have a digital licence on the MS activation servers? If yes, then Windows activates, it's that simple.
OK guys - just reporting that this worked near-perfectly (and the only imperfection was my bad!)
I did the whole restore offline and changed the PC name to "SpareComputer" so that it would not clash with the name of the computer it was imaged from when plugged into the network... however, it still didn't come up on the network, until I remembered that all our computers have static IP addresses. Once I changed the IPv4 adapter setting to "Obtain an IP address automatically" it popped up on the network immediately.
Thank you all for your help
Something you might consider for IP addressing... All of my individual computers, printers, TVs, etc. are set for automatic DHCP. Then I use the IP reservation table in my router to match an IP address to their network interface MAC address. So each component always gets the same IP address connected to my network, but when I travel with my laptops, they are set up to work on any other network. This would help with your backups. With Windows set for DHCP, when you restore the image from Computer A to Computer B, Computer B will retain its own IP address without you having to change anything. My computers' IP addresses survive clean installs and restoration of backups that way.
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