Upgrading everything in my PC except my HDD and SSD, and I need help with reinstalling and activating Windows 10.

forkness

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Sep 13, 2015
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I'm in a bit of a unique situation here; My PC is getting old, so I've bought new all new parts, but last year I put a new hard drive(2TB) and SSD(240GB) into my system. Right now, Windows is installed on the hard drive, which I'm using as the boot drive.

I'm moving from an intel processor to a Ryzen 5 2600x and installing it with a new motherboard, so I'll have to reinstall and reactivate my copy of Windows 10. However, I want to install Windows onto my SSD this time around. There's not much installed onto my SSD currently, so I'm probably going to move things I want to keep to the hard drive and wipe it for a fresh install of windows. So I need to remove windows from the Hard drive without losing any data, while making my SSD the boot drive.

My only issue is I'm not really sure how I should go about doing this, and am looking for advice to make this process as smooth as possible. Any tips are appreciated, thanks!
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


What os is it, and where did it come from?
 

forkness

Reputable
Sep 13, 2015
7
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4,510



Windows 10 Home. I originally had a purchased copy of Windows 8 when I first built my pc years ago, but I used the free upgrade to Win 10 when it was available.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


OK, good.
Read and do this before you change any parts:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3164428/windows-build-1607-activation.html

That's for the OS licensing.

Then, fresh OS install on the SSD.
How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10