Cloning to another PC - have new legit key

MWombat · 22 Sep 2019

Hello all.
I have a Dell Inspiron laptop with pre installed OEM W10 Home.
It has taken a while to set it up but it is now exactly how I want it.

I also have a Lenovo G50 laptop that runs a non-activated W7 very well [dont have key].

I now want to replace the W7 in the Lenovo G50 with W10 - I have an 'unused' legit Home key.
Rather than doing a clean install and spending ages duplicating my current Dell W10 set up [which I want to keep], will I be able to ''clone" W10 from the Dell to a new SSD and then simply swap it into the Lenovo and activate with my unused key ?

Thanks.

dalchina · 22 Sep 2019

Hi, perhaps. But consider- is your Win 10 UEFI/GPT? And is your Win 7 legacy BIOS only?

And there may be technical issues running Win 10 on your Win 7 machine- missing drivers, stutter... or it might all be fine. From an engineering point of view, running win 10 on a machine on which it's not been proven to work and for which the manfacturer does not provide Win 10 drivers is working outside specification.

Millions do- but there's no guarantee, and no guarantee that it will continue to work with successive Win 10 upgrades.

You haven't said which G50 model it is- check for any evidence of people running Win 10 on it. For which Windows edition does Lenovo publish latest drivers for that machine?

Example: G50-80 model 80E502Q3IH is supported running Windows 10

Check the BIOS is up to date.

spending ages duplicating my current Dell W10 set up

- depends what this means. If lots of registry customisation - who knows?

Have you considered the implications for any licensed programs you may have? Will those still be valid?

Do you have Dell utilities installed? You will need different ones for the Lenovo- there are some potentially useful ones.

MWombat · 23 Sep 2019

Thanks dalchina,
Lots of things to consider !
Will give all you wrote a lot more thought and post back.