Reflect Restore Issues

I've been experimenting installing Windows 10 on an old PC - see Windows 10 on 2004 PC?. I have 2 drives - a SSD containing the OS files and an old HDD for storing downloads and OS backups.

I got Windows 10 FCU 32 bit working and activated with a digital licence linked to my MS account. I made a Reflect backup of the SSD OS drive on an external USB drive.

I then tried clean installing the 64 bit version of Windows 10 FCU which failed by whichever route I tried at the first boot screen. I've now given up and restored the 32 bit installation using a Reflect boot disk.

The restore worked OK but I had several issues:

1. The restored OS was initially not activated but eventually activated with the digital licence after an hour - is this normal?
2. The second HDD was not listed in This PC. I looked at disk management and noted the drive was inactive since both drives had the same signature. I used the DISKPART UNIQUEID command to change the signature of the HDD and it was then displayed. Why did this happen after restoring the backup image?
3. I first made a Reflect recovery drive using PE 10 rescue media on a DVD but this wouldn't boot on my old PC. I then made another rescue DVD using PE 3.1 and that booted and worked fine. Why is the PE type sensitive to the age of the PC?

Did you use Reflect 6 or 7? Version 7 has many problems, I recommend using v6 instead.

muchomurka said:

Did you use Reflect 6 or 7? Version 7 has many problems, I recommend using v6 instead.

I used v7. Such is progress!

I stay on v6 so cannot help unfortunately...

CountMike said:

1. It's activated thru MS account or on MS servers, not localy so it may take some time to connect and go thru, even a day or two or longer.
3. Windows PE reflects the windows version it's made from, it's just any exceptionally small and reduced OS.

Thanks. I didn't realise activation can take a day or more since activation of my previous updates on other PCs was very quick.