[SOLVED] Move Windows installation between motherboards

[TheFabled]

Hi. I tried to google this, but didn't really find what i would call a conclusive answer.
I'm currently on Core i7-9700K on Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra.
And i just ordered Core i7-12700k and Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X DDR4.

Will it work if i just move my M.2 with windows 10 over to the new motherboard?

If so, this will be perfect. I just swap the motherbaord and the cpu and use the same ram. And this without having to reinstall and set everything up from scratch.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

I mean it will but often causes driver conflicts and issues I would just do a clean install.

 

[TheFabled]

I mean it will but often causes driver conflicts and issues I would just do a clean install.

Still like the old days huh?
No way to "flush" windows?, like strip it down to scratch and "pretend" it's reinstalling? I'm just trying to avoid spending days installing and setting up windows again.
Like, let it uninstall every single driver, and reinstall all it needs? The difference will of course be that windows will then know where all my apps are located and all the settings i use for everything. It takes many days to get it back to where it was.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

You can try but on new hardware I always run into weird issues so I avoid Hotswap like the plague unless going into the same hardware. I do this for a living its not worth the headache if you run into issues.

But that is your call.

 

[TheFabled]

You can try but on new hardware I always run into weird issues so I avoid Hotswap like the plague unless going into the same hardware. I do this for a living its not worth the headache if you run into issues.

But that is your call.

Yeah. I guess in that case, i should just go straight for Windows 11. Have to wait anyways for screws for the Corsair H100i watercooler so i can use it on the Alder Lake.
Thanks for your help

 

[dwd999]

And don't forget that since your Windows license is linked to your motherboard, your new motherboard installation will need a new activation which may involve calling microsoft.

 

[TheFabled]

And don't forget that since your Windows license is linked to your motherboard, your new motherboard installation will need a new activation which may involve calling microsoft.

Yeah i actually have 4 windows 10 licenses lying around atm. But i wonder if i should go straight for windows 11 install, or install 10 first and then upgrade. I don't have any 11 keys.

 

[dwd999]

Probably better to go with Win 10 first, make sure everything works especially all your device drivers, activation, etc. and create an disk image (Acronis or Macrium) of your working installation. Then try the W11 upgrade, perhaps on an alternate ssd if you have one, and hope for the best. When I first tried W11 I had some unsupported devices listed in device manager that had been fine in W10 and I had to figure out what they were. I wound up having to load the Intel_SerialIO_Driver_V30.100.2042.1 file, don't ask me why that wasn't included in the W11 images. At least if you save a W10 image, you can just restore it and overwrite any failures in W11. I'm gotten over the whole W11 thing so I intend to wait until next year to consider W11 again. I'll be following all the articles and posts about W11 problems, and when it looks like the major problems have been solved, I'll try it again on my alternative ssd and see how it performs at that time. After that I'll consider it for daily use but I'm sticking with W10 until then since its pretty clear you can't count on W11 in a serious situation.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi. I tried to google this, but didn't really find what i would call a conclusive answer.
I'm currently on Core i7-9700K on Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra.
And i just ordered Core i7-12700k and Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X DDR4.

Will it work if i just move my M.2 with windows 10 over to the new motherboard?

If so, this will be perfect. I just swap the motherbaord and the cpu and use the same ram. And this without having to reinstall and set everything up from scratch.

Fresh install.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Deleted member 14196]

It doesn’t take days to set up windows. Minutes maybe. Not days. You are just being lazy. Look forward to trouble. He will spend more time troubleshooting this then he will with a clean install

 

[TheFabled]

It doesn’t take days to set up windows. Minutes maybe. Not days. You are just being lazy. Look forward to trouble. He will spend more time troubleshooting this then he will with a clean install

Ehh.. Windows is not the problem, it's the countless apps and drivers i use and so forth. It's reloading hundreds of torrents for seeding, it's arranging icons in fences, it's wallpapers, multi screen setups, tweaking windows settings, you name it. My audio software alone with all the addons i use takes days to install and configure.

If it only were as simple as "just install" windows i wouldn't bother making this thread lol.

 

[USAFRet]

Ehh.. Windows is not the problem, it's the countless apps and drivers i use and so forth. It's reloading hundreds of torrents for seeding, it's arranging icons in fences, it's wallpapers, multi screen setups, tweaking windows settings, you name it. My audio software alone with all the addons i use takes days to install and configure.

If it only were as simple as "just install" windows i wouldn't bother making this thread lol.

Even with all those "issues"...moving a Windows install between systems is a total maybe.

1. It works just fine
2. It fails completely
3. It "works", but you're chasing issues for weeks/months.

The complexity of the whole software stack makes #2 or 3 the most likely.
We'd all wish it were #1, but it is not.

Will it work

What is your fallback position if/when it fails?

And you DO have a 100% backup of the data on this drive, right?

 

[TheFabled]

Probably better to go with Win 10 first, make sure everything works especially all your device drivers, activation, etc. and create an disk image (Acronis or Macrium) of your working installation........ I'll be following all the articles and posts about W11 problems, and when it looks like the major problems have been solved, I'll try it again on my alternative ssd and see how it performs at that time. After that I'll consider it for daily use but I'm sticking with W10 until then since its pretty clear you can't count on W11 in a serious situation.

Thanks, yeah. It does indeed seem like Windows 11 has some issues atm. I'm playing a lot of demanding games, so whatever i can do to make my games go smoother, I'm usually pretty quick to do whats necessary (Not including paying twice the price for 20% performance boost). Like once REBAR was released i immediately upgraded the BIOS on my RTX3070.

It was actually because of DirectStorage i wanted Windows 11 early in the first place to be honest. But as i have understood lately, it seems that DS is also coming for Windows 10. If it does, i can probably wait a while before upgrading.

 

[TheFabled]

Even with all those "issues"...moving a Windows install between systems is a total maybe.

1. It works just fine
2. It fails completely
3. It "works", but you're chasing issues for weeks/months.

The complexity of the whole software stack makes #2 or 3 the most likely.
We'd all wish it were #1, but it is not.


What is your fallback position if/when it fails?

And you DO have a 100% backup of the data on this drive, right?

Yeah i have daily scheduled backups of everything important to two drives in different locations. Learned the hard way.
But i think i will just go with clean install, still seems like this is the way to go. I'm a bit disappointed in this, you would think that by now, microsoft would've found a way to sort of reinstall a previous installation without removing years of settings and tweaking. Just sort of cleanse it.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Why does Microsoft have to figure out how to do that? I know for a fact that it would be virtually impossible to do that with what I do for work so I don’t think you really understand what’s going on under the hood

You really have no idea how astronomically difficult it would be to make it work reliable for ALL THE DIFFERENT HARDWARE. And why should they do it just to satisfy you?

They don’t do it because it’s next to impossible and they don’t have infinite testing time to test all the different configurations

The fact is what you’re asking for cannot be done reliably with any existing operating system

And setting up Torrents for seeding ? I’m supposed to feel sorry for you about that? You helping people steal copyrighted software and media?

 

[TheFabled]

Why does Microsoft have to figure out how to do that? I know for a fact that it would be virtually impossible to do that with what I do for work so I don’t think you really understand what’s going on under the hood

You really have no idea how astronomically difficult it would be to make it work reliable for ALL THE DIFFERENT HARDWARE. And why should they do it just to satisfy you?

They don’t do it because it’s next to impossible and they don’t have infinite testing time to test all the different configurations

The fact is what you’re asking for cannot be done reliably with any existing operating system

And setting up Torrents for seeding ? I’m supposed to feel sorry for you about that? You helping people steal copyrighted software and media?

lol why are you so toxic? How is that even remotely going to be useful to anyone on these forums?
<Redacted by Moderator>
You don't use torrents only for piracy, that you conluded as much right out of the box, and made a point out of it, says more about you than me in this context. I work with music production, and i seed hundreds of projects by me and for fellow composers, designers and producers. This is the fastest and best way to share our work.-

And just satisfy me?
I would bet close to anyone (not you of course) would appreciate that OS installations are a thing of the past. That you can just move your OS from one rig to the next without setting everything up from scratch. In the least let it install fresh but then afterwards add all settings, tweaks, setups, arrangements, directory paths. And drivers for synths, drumpads, samplers etc etc from your last installation.

 

[USAFRet]

Lets all calm down a bit. Deal?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Well, Too bad it’s not physically possible to move systems Willy Nilly like I pointed out. You can forget about it because it isn’t going to happen and you can’t do it with any operating system. Not Linux and not macOS either. The only way it works is when you have identical hardware that you’re switching to but even then some things would end up changeing

No operating system would make it out the door for release because you could never test it And people would have billions of problems with it. That was my main point

I am very glad to hear that you are not using Torrents for illegal purposes.so much of it does go on.

 

[TheFabled]

So. As a last question just to be on point.

Ok so we have to do a clean windows installation, fine.
I'm not a computer expert, and i don't know about every little bit of shortcut and things you can do with an OS. I'm above average maybe, but far from an expert.

Now, since i on this pc have a fully functional Windows 10 installation, with god knows how many apps and drivers, icon arrangements, app settings and all this stuff.
Can all these settings somehow be saved and imported to another freshly installed windows?

i mean i understand that drivers for motherboards needs to be replaced. But other than that, i plug in everything else that i used before. The same synthesizers, the same equipment, the programs will all be the same, using the same plugins, the same setup, the same arrangements and will be installed in the same locations. The only thing that is changing is that i replace the cpu and the motherboard.

So yes i get that you have to install fresh to be safe and not have serious issues down the line. but there is no way of saving everything else, and just re-add it after installation?

At the very least, are there some way that all my windows settings and tweaks can be saved and restored? Maybe in the cloud or something, I've never tried these things before.
All I'm trying to do is to spend as little time as possible to get windows and all my apps and setups back to where it was before.

 

[USAFRet]

And again, that is a no.

All those settings and applications are entries in the Registry and elsewhere.
The new install has a new Reg. You can't bring the old Registry into the new system.

Sorry.


Plugins are generally easy. At least they are with my CAD/video/photo applications.
Copy the folders over, and tell the newly installed application where that plugin folder is.