Thanks again, all understood about the HDD. The SSD is the SATA variety currently connected in a Compaq Presario CQ5304UK Desktop PC running Windows 10 Home Premium, and an AMD Athlon II X2 215 Processor. This will be transferred into an Acer Veriton X2631G that has a digital licence for Windows 10 Pro, and an Intel g3240 processor.
First run up the new machine with its Windows 10 Pro and make sure that Settings > Update & Security > Activation says "Activated with a digital licence...." (linked to your MS account or not, either will do). This means the new PC has a digital licence stored on Microsoft's activation servers and linked to its hardware ID.
Let's assume you can transfer you old machine's Windows Home system successfully to the new machine, overcoming the MBR to GPT, Legacy/UEFI issues. You have been given various methods to do that already so I won't repeat them. Windows is pretty good at sorting out drivers for any new hardware it finds itself running on.
Once you have your old Home system running on the new machine it is simple to upgrade it to Pro. You just change the installed key to the generic key for Pro.
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Generic Product Keys to Install Windows 10 Editions
Change Product Key in Windows 10
Windows will check on the activation servers to see if this PC already has a digital licence for Pro, when it finds that it has one it will then perform the upgrade to Pro and activate it.
The legacy BIOS (MBR) v. UEFI (GPT) issue may be as simple to solve as disabling secure boot and enabling CSM mode in firmware (BIOS).
Acer Veriton X2631G is a Intel Haswell computer. It is probably from 2014 - 2015.
It is prior than Win 10 so it probably came with Win 7 or 8, not 10.
Make sure Win 10 pro is activated.
As it is a quite old computer, it probably has a Legacy BIOS and the disk is also Legacy-MBR and you wont need to convert the SSD to EFI-GPT.
It may come with 4G of memory. It will be good to add more ram as the OS is 64 bits
It is controversy but, In my opinion, yes, specially if it share memory with the GPU (graphics).
Lets suppose it shares 800 M with the GPU. Then it will have 3.2G for the OS (32 0r 64 bits)
If Win 64 uses 2.5G only 700M will be left to programs.
If Win 32 uses 1.5G, 1700M will be left to programs.
I always install 32 Bits on computers with 4 G of memory.
Well, as you said, it can be a bit controversial. Actually, it really depends on exactly what graphics the machine uses. I have most of my 4GB machines running x64 W10, but none of those share memory with a GPU. They all use the integrated graphics that goes with their chipset.
With a 32-bit OS about 1GB for the separate video RAM has to be mapped into the 4GB address space, meaning 1 GB of the installed RAM is 'Hardware reserved' and unavailable to the OS or the user. With x64 that same video RAM can be mapped above 4GB and just a few MB are 'Hardware reserved', meaning virtually all installed RAM available for use.
If there is 3GB or less installed RAM then I'd agree that 32-bit is a no-brainer, by for 4GB it's not so clear cut.
For comparison, here is what I got with two clean installs of W10 2004, one x86, the other x64. Both installs were on the same 4GB machine, System Two in my specs below.
x86 - total physical memory available for the OS or the user = 2.93GB, available RAM with Windows running 1.8GB.
x64 - total physical memory available tor the OS or the user = 3.93GB, available RAM with Windows running, 2.6GB.
Last edited by Bree; 11 Oct 2020 at 17:02.
I now have the 2631G and it currently has Legacy BIOS. I also have an Acer 2611G that uses UEFI. I want to use UEFI on the 2631G and intend to follow your suggested procedure shown below:
This is what I would do.
- On the old computer, create a disk image and save it to an external disk.
- Create a Rescue Drive
- Boot from the Rescue Drive and convert the SSD from Legacy-MBR to EFI-GPT using MBR2GPT.exe. Use Brink tutorial Convert Windows 10 from Legacy BIOS to UEFI without Data Loss. When done, shutdown.
- Remove the SSD from the old computer and install on the new one. As the SSD now is EFI-GPT it will boot in the new computer but will not boot on the old.
- Once running on the new computer, update it to Pro. It will activate as the new computer has a pro license.
Before I do that do I need to change the 2631G from BIOS to UEFI or will this be detected when it boots from the converted SSD?
To use a UEFI- GPT disk as a boot able drive you MUST have UEFI BIOS. Make sure the 2631G computer has a UEFI BIOS.
Witch drive you intent to convert to UEFI-GPT, the 2631G or the 2611G?
To convert a drive from Legacy-MBR to UEFI-GPT the drive must have Win 10 in it.
On the 2631G, install the drive you want to convert, change the BIOS to UEFI mode, Boot the Rescue Drive as UEFI, convert the drive from Legacy-MBR to UEFI-GPT, restart, and boot from the converted drive.
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