[SOLVED] How to deal with windows? New motherboard

[Noobgamer37]

Im going to be upgrading my motherboard and cpu within the next week. Which means im going to have to reinstall windows. Having never done this before i have a few questions.

#1: I have multiple harddrives on my pc. Will I need to wipe all of them to properly reinstall windows or just the one that has windows on it?

#2: How do I reinstall windows once everything is out together? Ive seen in videos online people just using the same ssd for multiple computers without ever reinstalling it. But ive also read that that wont work. I do have a purchased version of windows I bought through microsoft.

 

[DSzymborski]

- It depends what's on the hard drives. If it's just data, you don't need to wipe that. If it's Steam games, those are very easy to move around, so you would just install the Steam application on the new drive and then point it to your old Steam directories and Steam figures it out. Old regular programs on those other hard drives, you probably should remove to clean up things as you'll have to reinstall.

- Lots of people try to simply slap their old installs into their new PCs. Some are successful. Some are successful initially but then have odd gremlins and performance hiccups for months or years to deal with. And many just fail. While you can always cut a corner, I strongly recommend following best practice and doing a full wipe-and-reinstall of the OS drive. Like a lot of things in life, you will tend to be fare better doing things right instead of doing things quickly.

 

[Noobgamer37]

- It depends what's on the hard drives. If it's just data, you don't need to wipe that. If it's Steam games, those are very easy to move around, so you would just install the Steam application on the new drive and then point it to your old Steam directories and Steam figures it out. Old regular programs on those other hard drives, you probably should remove to clean up things as you'll have to reinstall.

- Lots of people try to simply slap their old installs into their new PCs. Some are successful. Some are successful initially but then have odd gremlins and performance hiccups for months or years to deal with. And many just fail. While you can always cut a corner, I strongly recommend following best practice and doing a full wipe-and-reinstall of the OS drive. Like a lot of things in life, you will tend to be fare better doing things right instead of doing things quickly.

How do I actually transfer windows.? Is it easiest to just plug in everything to the new motherboard and than reinstall it from there?

 

[DSzymborski]

How do I actually transfer windows.? Is it easiest to just plug in everything to the new motherboard and than reinstall it from there?

First, create installation media on a flash drive.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-10-create-installation-media

Then, move only your hard drive, and boot to the flash drive, wipe everything and reinstall.

Once Windows is installed, then install your remaining hard drives.

Whether you need a new license key depends on how your obtained Windows 10.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/transfer-windows-10-license-new-pc/

 

[Noobgamer37]

First, create installation media on a flash drive.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-10-create-installation-media

Then, move only your hard drive, and boot to the flash drive, wipe everything and reinstall.

Once Windows is installed, then install your remaining hard drives.

Whether you need a new license key depends on how your obtained Windows 10.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/transfer-windows-10-license-new-pc/

Thanks for your help!