Possible to sysprep on UEFI box, then install HDD in Legacy BIOS box?

cereberus said:

I agree - it is insane to expect users to activate everything especially VMs for just a one-off task.

Exactly. Not only are we allowed to use Windows unactivated in so called grace period, but also it really would be insane to spend product keys and licenses for something that really only take an hour or so to build a deployment image or as in OP's case, to prepare a HDD to be sent away to another PC.

cereberus said:

Just one minor addition to your instructions - when OP has finished the job, OP should remove the dual boot entry using msconfig.

Yes, I forgot that, as well as the "final" steps to be done at receiver's, the father-in-law's end:

OP should prepare a WinPE USB / DVD to be sent with HDD (tutorial).

When the HDD is mounted on new PC, it is non-bootable at first ("Operating system not found"). It should be booted first time from WinPE. It boots to command prompt. Then the father-in-law needs to check drive letters with DISKPART using following command sequence:

diskpart
list vol
exit

In most cases the System Reserved partition is shown at this point as C: and the Windows partition as D: drive. Assuming this is the case, boot records need to be created with following command, replacing both instances of D: with actual temporary drive letter for Windows partition, and replacing C: with actual temporary drive letter for System Reserved partition:

D:\Windows\System32\bcdboot D:\Windows /s C:



All done. PC can now be rebooted to Windows 10 from HDD. Setup will remove drive letter from System Reserved partition, and change letter for Windows partition C:.

Kari

Nice work, as always, Kari. Keep it up!
--Ed--

Kari said:

Exactly. Not only are we allowed to use Windows unactivated in so called grace period, but also it really would be insane to spend product keys and licenses for something that really only take an hour or so to build a deployment image or as in OP's case, to prepare a HDD to be sent away to another PC.




Yes, I forgot that, as well as the "final" steps to be done at receiver's, the father-in-law's end:

OP should prepare a WinPE USB / DVD to be sent with HDD (tutorial).

When the HDD is mounted on new PC, it is non-bootable at first ("Operating system not found"). It should be booted first time from WinPE. It boots to command prompt. Then the father-in-law needs to check drive letters with DISKPART using following command sequence:

diskpart
list vol
exit

In most cases the System Reserved partition is shown at this point as C: and the Windows partition as D: drive. Assuming this is the case, boot records need to be created with following command, replacing both instances of D: with actual temporary drive letter for Windows partition, and replacing C: with actual temporary drive letter for System Reserved partition:

D:\Windows\System32\bcdboot D:\Windows /s C:



All done. PC can now be rebooted to Windows 10 from HDD. Setup will remove drive letter from System Reserved partition, and change letter for Windows partition C:.

Kari

Thinking about it, if OPs pc can be put in legacy bios mode, it would be a bit simpler to remove his drive, put in blank hdd, install 10, sysprep/customise, then remove hdd and put pc back to uefi and put OPs original drive back.

Then the HDD would not need any work at far end.

cereberus said:

Thinking about it, if OPs pc can be put in legacy bios mode, it would be a bit simpler to remove his drive, put in blank hdd, install 10, sysprep/customise, then remove hdd and put pc back to uefi and put OPs original drive back.

Then the HDD would not need any work at far end.

Very true.

Instructions in my posts are for a scenario where you need to deploy Windows to an MBR disk on a GPT machine which can't boot in legacy BIOS mode.

Kari