[SOLVED] Will Windows 10 lose activation if I clone to another laptop?

[QwerkyPengwen]

Sup folks.

So normally when I do any computer up, I just install a fresh copy of Windows.
And when it comes to cloning, I've only ever cloned to keep the OS on the same system.

But my predicament is this:

My mother has a laptop she uses for work but it's really old and slow now with a Core i3, and while I could just simply install a fresh copy of Windows 10 on the new laptop and transfer over data from her current laptop, I then would have to take it to the main guy at work so he can install the remote desktop application that allows her to connect to her work computer from home to use company software and whatnot.

This process is easily doable, just a pain in the butt.

So I was hoping that instead I could clone her current HDD over to the new HDD and boot up.

The guy at work last I checked activates Windows 10 using a commercial license that allows for multiple activation's on different machines, and the laptop she has now was given to her by him a long time ago.

I am hoping that this type of activation of Windows 10 allows for hardware changes.
And if it requires me to link a Microsoft account to her local account on her PC for it to work then I'll do that.

But if the activation won't carry over, then I'd like to know ahead of time so I can start doing things the long pain in the butt way.

Also, you may be asking why not just move over the HDD itself instead of cloning, and that is for two reasons.

Reason one is that the laptop has to be returned to the guy.

Reason two is that the current HDD is only 500GB and the new HDD is 1TB, so I would want her to get the extra storage.
Nevermind that last part, I thought it had a 1TB drive in it, but it's also 500GB.

So could I just swap the HDD's out or will that be no good?

 

[TerryLaze]

And if it requires me to link a Microsoft account to her local account on her PC for it to work then I'll do that.

Yes if you have a licence linked to an account then it won't mind any hardware changes,you log into the account you have activated windows.

Also, you may be asking why not just move over the HDD itself instead of cloning, and that is for two reasons.

Same difference, cloning or real hdd it's the same thing (hence clone) .
And although windows 10 is great in working on different hardware it could happen that it fails,in that case use a cloning app that has a -clone to dissimilar- option.


Also you can just use windows 10 un activated for ever and you only loose a few customization options.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Thanks. I'll just link a Microsoft account then swap drives into the new laptop and hope windows does it's configuring of new hardware properly since it is a different CPU and unlike the old laptop, this one has a dedicated nvidia chip in it.
If that doesn't go over too well then I can still swap the drives back, and if it won't work or boot properly back in the original laptop, then I can still connect the HDD itself to a sata data and power cable in my rig and start dragging and dropping files into a backup folder to get files off it then just move those over onto the new laptop and HDD.

But with my experience in the past with switching up hardware like that on Windows 10, it should reconfigure just fine, and I can go through and use DDU along with some other utilities to wipe all 3rd party drivers from the system so that Windows reverts back to the generic ones then go through and install the needed ones for the hardware manually from the manufacturer website.

Then everything should be just fine, assuming I have to do that in the first place lol.

 

[TerryLaze]

But with my experience in the past with switching up hardware like that on Windows 10, it should reconfigure just fine, and I can go through and use DDU along with some other utilities to wipe all 3rd party drivers from the system so that Windows reverts back to the generic ones then go through and install the needed ones for the hardware manually from the manufacturer website.

Then everything should be just fine, assuming I have to do that in the first place lol.

Yes win 10 is great in that regard but it still happens some times.
And this is also exactly what the dissimilar option does,just automatically.

Good luck!