Windows 10 Pro Clean Install - Possibly Unattended - Need advice pls

NavyLCDR said:

@Rhothgar,

First, your digital license for Windows 10 for that computer is stored on Microsoft's activation servers. This is 100% independent of any MS account. The unique ID for the computer is 99%+ the motherboard itself. Unless you change the motherboard itself, you can change pretty much everything else and Windows will still activate so long as the motherboard is the same and the edition of Windows 10 or 11 installed is the same (Home, Pro, Education, etc.).

Microsoft has become very lax in allowing digital licenses to be transferred from computer to computer. In order to transfer the digital license from computer to computer, you must log into the old computer with a Microsoft account. This will establish a link in your Microsoft account that points to the digital license stored on Microsoft activation servers. In fact, any user who logs into that computer with their Microsoft account will get the same link in their own account.

When you move the Windows 10 or 11 to a new computer, it will detect the new motherboard and Windows will deactivate. If you log into the new computer with the same Microsoft account, you can run the activation troubleshooter and tell it that you have changed hardware. There is a very good chance that your old computer will pop up in a list and you can select it to transfer (and it actually copies the digital license, not transfers) the digital license from. People have even been able to transfer digital licenses from virtual machines to physical computers. OEM v. Retail has no effect on this process. Any OEM license can be changed to a retail license simply by changing the OEM product key to the generic product key for the same edition of Windows 10/11.

In regard to drivers, Windows 10/11 is very good at being moved to new hardware. There are two roadblocks to prevent success, generally. UEFI v. legacy BIOS (and GPT v. MBR disk partitioning), and the type of disk controller being used: SATA v. IDE v. RAID. I'm not sure if SATA to NVME causes an issue, I haven't done that move yet. It really is not worth it to try to delete drivers from the old computer. They are only taking up a few hundred MB of disk space.

Thanks for your post. I think it is reassuring!

I'm just wondering if I should just use the Reset this PC option and avoid all the stress, delete all apps and reinstall them clean - those that I want that is.

Having read a few of the actual Microsoft articles, I'm with you on the hardware change. You have to do something pretty drastic to have to be required to reactivate it. In my case, this will be when I transfer from xw4600 to Z420. Having said that, I have already done that on my partner's PC but it was a barebones system and I just plugged the old SSD in.

I'll have more of a tinker tomorow. Worst case scenario I won't be wiping the old SSD until I am confident it is activated and no issues. Is there a specific time limit I need to give it for any potential problem to rear its ugly head do you know?

Also, been looking at cost of buying a new retail package on Ebay and a few sellers are asking £85 for a retail USB. However, I don't really want to be paying for it twice. I am sure I have spent enough money over the years with Microsoft with the original XP retail (£79 from memory or was it £119?) and all the various upgrades.

I seem to recall Microsoft took pity on me when I installed Windows 7 some years ago and probably activated it for me in a phone call. I cannot 100% recall.

One of the other things you mention is UEFI. This is something I have never dabbled in and am running the legacy BIOS. I wonder what the benefits are from an operational point of view versus the amount of headache it could case.

I cannot go to NVMe on the boot drive with the Z420 unfortunately. Only as a secondary drive.

- - - Updated - - -

Well. All went well. Thanks for your help and reassurance on this.

The licence will reactivate up to 1001 times.

That should be enough until I am forced to upgrade to W11

Rhothgar said:

The licence will reactivate up to 1001 times.

That should be enough until I am forced to upgrade to W11

The rearm count of 1001 is just a placeholder. It will not go down for a digital license. I've reactivated hundreds of installs of Windows 10/11 on my test computer over the last 10 years with the same digital license and the rearm count has never gone down.