Replace motherboard,etc without losing data - or Win10 license ??

I have a Windows 10 Pro (Windows 10 [Version 6.3.19042]) system here that I am very happy with; all SSDs, including an M.2 NVMe drive for games, excellent video card, tons of USB 3 slots. However, my motherboard is an 8-year-old Gigabyte with Core i7-3820. So I've purchased a modern Ryzen motherboard (Asus AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi)), CPU (Ryzen 7 3800X), 32GB RAM...

I would *really* wish to replace the motherboard/cpu/ram on this machine, without losing my 8 years of software history, and I hope to just update the existing Windows 10 Pro license with the new hardware. Drives and video will not change. I have an existing DVD/BluRay optical drive which will still be available on the new system.

Is this possible?? If so, do you have an existing how-to guide here that walks me through what I need to prepare for this?
If not, could I get advise here one what I will need to do?

Thank you for any assistance that you can provide for this.

The first big question is what type of license is your Windows 10 Pro? Someone is going to come along and suggest that you run:
slmgr /dlv
in order to find out. But that command will not tell you. There are very limited circumstances under which Windows 10 will activate under an OEM activation channel, and most OEM licenses actually activate via the retail channel. The type of Windows 10 license you have (OEM v. Retail) is determined by the first product key that was used to activate it, so where did the product key you activated Windows 10 Pro come from and is it OEM or Retail?

Also, see this Microsoft article for more information:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-fb3fc72b6665

NavyLCDR said:

The first big question is what type of license is your Windows 10 Pro? Someone is going to come along and suggest that you run:
slmgr /dlv
in order to find out. But that command will not tell you. There are very limited circumstances under which Windows 10 will activate under an OEM activation channel, and most OEM licenses actually activate via the retail channel. The type of Windows 10 license you have (OEM v. Retail) is determined by the first product key that was used to activate it, so where did the product key you activated Windows 10 Pro come from and is it OEM or Retail?

Also, see this Microsoft article for more information:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-fb3fc72b6665

Interesting... well, this machine has had multiple OS installations on it, starting with Windows XP Home, then a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium many years ago, then upgraded to Windows 7 Pro last year, via an official Microsoft upgrade license. Then last month I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro using Microsoft upgrade software. So I have *no* idea what my provenance is at this point!!

I'm looking at my Microsoft 'My Account' page, it just lists this machine as "Windows 10 Professional, Version 2009", it doesn't say anything about OEM or Retail...

The license information should be on Microsoft servers.

For product ID you can use:
Activation troubleshooting
Products: Belarc Advisor

zbook said:

The license information should be on Microsoft servers.

For product ID you can use:
Activation troubleshooting
Products: Belarc Advisor

This is what Belarc Advisor shows for Windows product keys:
Microsoft - Windows 10 Professional (x64) [number](Key: [product key])
Microsoft - Windows 7 Professional (prior license) [number](Key: [product key])
(I don't know if I should actually show the keys here or not...)

What does this tell me about the OEM vs Retail question??

- - - Updated - - -

Wait... I just looked at Activation information on my machine, and it says this:

Edition: Windows 10 Pro
Activation: Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account

Does that answer your questions in a useful way??

These are telephone numbers as a backup option:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...e-28de8afeb3f2

With Belarc and showkey you're set.

Your Windows 10 Pro product key is VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T. Run showkey plus, it will tell you what type your Windows 7 product key was.
ShowKeyPlus

Yours is a situation where it will always activate via the Windows 10 retail activation channel, even if the history of the OS license is 100% OEM.

Berton said:

This is what one of my machines shows with that slmgr /dlv command:

Which, respectfully, means nothing regarding OEM v. Retail license. I am on a laptop now with OEM Windows 10 Home license stored in UEFI. If I clean install Windows 10 and let it install itself, I get an activation from the OEM activation channel. If I then just change the product key to YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7M9GH-8HVX7, it will activate from the Retail activation channel. Did I change my Windows 10 Home license from OEM to Retail? No, not at all. I only changed the product key from the OEM product key in UEFI firmware to the generic Windows 10 Home product key, which always activates on the retail channel regardless of if the underlying license is OEM or Retail.