[SOLVED] Question about upgrading (boot drive transplant)

[Apexpulse]

Is it possible to essentially do a boot drive transplant?

say I were to take the boot drive with windows 10 physically out of my custom Dell workstation laptop and put it into a Dell desktop would it boot?

 

[USAFRet]

Is it possible to essentially do a boot drive transplant?

say I were to take the boot drive with windows 10 physically out of my custom Dell workstation laptop and put it into a Dell desktop would it boot?

Highly unlikely that will work.
Especially from a laptop to a desktop.

Moving a drive like this, there are 3 possible outcomes:

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

#1 is the least likely to occur.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It might "boot", but you will almost certainly have problems because the core hardware on the system board will be highly different. Windows will try to reconfigure drivers and boot partition information but it's always hit or miss even when going from a similar desktop board to another desktop board, so going from laptop to desktop is almost certainly going to be problematic. Again, it will likely "work", but most likely it won't work well or you will have some kind of problems or ghost issues that will make it a hair pulling ordeal.

My recommendation is that you can try it, but first be sure to back up any important files on there, but at the first sign of "what is going on here" just stop and do a clean install. The other problem is, activation. If the the desktop already has an activated copy of Windows 10 attached to a Microsoft account it might activate fine, otherwise you'll likely run into problems there.

I would highly recommend you read ALL of the following.

How to associate your windows 10 license with a Microsoft account

Reactivating Windows 10 after a hardware change

Windows build 1607 (Or newer) and activation after a hardware change



and in case you should ever need to do a CLEAN install of Windows, this guide will help to ensure it gets done properly.

How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10, the RIGHT way​

 

[Apexpulse]

So then I was thinking I should just transfer all the files on to a backup disc. Format the disc. Do a fresh install of windows 10 and then put all the files back on. And install the drivers for the desktop. That should work?

 

[USAFRet]

So then I was thinking I should just transfer all the files on to a backup disc. Format the disc. Do a fresh install of windows 10 and them put all the files back on. And install the drivers for the desktop. That should work?

This OS install happens while the drive, or any drive, is in the desktop.

 

[Lafong]

So then I was thinking I should just transfer all the files on to a backup disc. Format the disc. Do a fresh install of windows 10 and them put all the files back on. And install the drivers for the desktop. That should work?

If you mean "transfer all personal files"........yes.

Let Windows give you whatever drivers it wants. Then evaluate whether or not you are satisfied with those drivers.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Let Windows give you whatever drivers it wants. Then evaluate whether or not you are satisfied with those drivers.

No. Actually, you want to let Windows give you whatever it wants, and THEN go to the motherboard product page, download the most recent drivers for chipset, network adapters and sound, and install them. Then go to the manufacturer page for your graphics card, AMD or Nvidia, and download the latest compatible driver for your card model, and install that. Then, you will be satisfied. Hoping for the universal generic drivers usually offered by Microsoft to give you full feature operation, can work in some cases, but won't in others. And a lot of problems are self created by relying on MS for drivers except when you have no other choice.