Moving System Disk From One MoBo to Another

Hey folks -

Yes, I know this is a silly idea, but bear with me please. My current system is an Asus X99-based Rampage V Extreme board, which I'm about to replace. I was fortunate enough to squeak one of NewEgg's latest shipments of the Asus Rampage VI Extreme, so that's incoming. The intent is to replace the motherboard, CPU, and RAM in my system, leaving the GPUs and SoundBlaster as is. Along with all of the storage.

Right now, I have an updated Win10 Pro installation on a Samsung 960 Pro NVMe drive. If I move it over to the new motherboard without reinstalling Windows, should it boot? I'd expect that if it does boot, it'd do so complaining about driver miss-matching (different NICs, different chipset, etc). But should it boot?

I am fully prepared to do a complete format/re-install as needed, of course. But I figured I'd try this dumb idea, first. Any guesses as to whether it'll succeed?

Josey Wales said:

what you want to try , Microsoft may have a problem with. You are moving a drive with windows 10 from one system to another. May not activate.

Yeah, I figured that if the system booted, it would be unhappy and need re-activating. I've done that before with previous versions of Windows, so I have no issues calling MS up. I was more curious if the Windows 10 installation should have all that's needed to boot properly on an entirely new chipset.

There's a 90% chance that Windows 10 will boot, it will give you a message for a couple minutes something along the lines of "Installing new devices", and then load and run happily ever after.

Here's the way Microsoft has provided to move the digital license from the old computer to new computer:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530

The two things that will keep Windows 10 from just adapting to the new hardware seamlessly are:

1. One computer was/is legacy BIOS using MBR type partitioning and other computer is/was UEFI using GPT type partitioning.

2. The two computers use different brands of SATA controllers and a brand specific SATA controller driver was installed. The way to prevent that from causing a hang is to delete the entry in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Then hold down the shift key when you click on shutdown from the power button on the start menu. Then move the drive over to the new computer.

My daughter's laptop needed to be sent back for warranty repair. I took the SSD out of her laptop, stuck it in a spare laptop, completely different make and model. Then when she got her own laptop back, moved the SSD back to it. Windows 10 adapted to the 2 moves just fine.

Josey Wales said:

USE MR in case it does not boot at least you will have an image you can restore. I would think that did is not legacy bios so there may be a possibility that it won't.

Both boards are using Asus' UEFI, so I don't expect that to be much of an issue. And the SATA controller won't come into play at all here since it's an NVMe drive.