Originally OEM Win 10 upgraded to Win 11 Pro -- swapping in new hardware

After hardware installation, while you wait for updates to download or for applications to install/upgrade, you could watch your favorite series or some movie in a PiP window (Picture in Picture), so it gets much less boring.

Apart from the programs we are regularly using, we usually have twice as many we use occasionally but we want them installed. All of them assuming we have the respective keys and licences to reinstall. They not only require time to install, but also more time to configure the way we like them because the default configuration is not convenient. For a typical home PC with tens of applications to reinstall and limited free time this can take more than 2-3 days. So clean installation is not always the best choice. Yes, it might be a little faster than an old installation but I value my free time more than a small difference in speed which with an SSD is even smaller.

spapakons said:

Apart from the programs we are regularly using, we usually have twice as many we use occasionally but we want them installed. All of them assuming we have the respective keys and licences to reinstall. They not only require time to install, but also more time to configure the way we like them because the default configuration is not convenient. For a typical home PC with tens of applications to reinstall and limited free time this can take more than 2-3 days. So clean installation is not always the best choice. Yes, it might be a little faster than an old installation but I value my free time more than a small difference in speed which with an SSD is even smaller.

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I'm leaning in your direction with this. The configuration of hardware and software goes back to 2017 on this system. Licenses have been renewed.

I can't speak for others, but I don't pinch pennies on the matter of storage devices and specialized uses of storage devices.

As far as personal data files -- Excel, Word, PDF archives, quicken accounting files, etc. -- I keep these on a separate "E:" drive. Movies, music, ripped-ISO and such things on an "F:" drive. Program installation files downloaded at purchase are also on E:

But of course we allow the actual installations of programs to reside on the C: drive.

I may have mentioned that the original 2017 computer configuration had Windows 7 on an SATA SSD -- a stupid choice even so. Then it became a dual-boot Win7-Win10. I swapped the SATA SSD for an NVME stick and got rid of Windows 7. And I think either before that or soon thereafter, I had to re-align the storage device. Following that, motherboard was replaced by an identical model but with a Kaby Lake replacing the Sky Lake processor (no problem with that, and I'm quite sure I went through the telephone exercise inputting the ten groups of numbers..) The mobo was replaced because on one dry windy February day, I was shuffling across the wool carpet to pluck my THC vaping pen charging in a USB port, and zapped the USB controller. A warning to all -- not about the evils of pot, but using your PC's USB ports to charge devices with batteries. Later there were perhaps two in-place-upgrade-repair installs for the usual reasons that SFC and DISM could not entirely fix.

All this time, with more than mainstreamer maintenance -- the bread and butter of Geek Squad, it has been a stand-up knock-down system. But the technology is 10 years old, even if some of the parts are only five years old. And for LGA 1200 technology, I can keep my 64GB RAM kits and get further usage from them.

So I'm going to give attention to a SYSPREP installation with the replacement hardware. I cross my fingers on this, because failure means likely outlays for new software licenses. Or at least I imagine so.

My own experience says sysprep is not entirely necessary. As long as the new system is not totally different from the old one (such as from Intel to AMD or vice versa), Windows should load normally and install drivers for the new hardware. It is VERY important not to interrupt this process. Let Windows do its stuff and then update the drivers with the official ones for better performance. Once I had moved my Windows 7 installation from an Intel Pentium 4 Prescott (socket 478) to an Intel Core 2 Duo successfully. Windows 10 and 11 should be easier to move to a newer system (no BSOD) because they have most modern drivers built-in. Of course if you are switching from Intel to AMD or vice versa, then you can expect a BSOD but again chances are much smaller in Windows 10/11 than they were in Windows XP, Vista and 7. Also high chance for BSOD when you switch to a different storage controller that Windows might not have drivers for, such as SATA to NVME.

BonzaiDuck said:

So I'm going to give attention to a SYSPREP installation with the replacement hardware.....

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spapakons said:

My own experience says sysprep is not entirely necessary. As long as the new system is not totally different from the old one (such as from Intel to AMD or vice versa), Windows should load normally and install drivers for the new hardware.....

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My own experience is that even going from Intel to AMD and back again is no problem, at least for Windows 10/11.

I moved the installed Windows 10 OS from a Legacy BIOS/MBR Intel-based laptop (a Windows 7 device that had upgraded to 10 in 2015) to my UEFI/GPT AMD-based System One in order for it to run on a supported device and get the W11 upgrade offer. When its case started to crack around the hinges I migrated the installed OS again, from AMD to my Intel-based System Seven.

I agree, Windows 10/11 are more tolerant in hardware changes than older Windows versions. However as a precaution I would first take a full disk backup (or clone it to a spare disk), and then I would connect it to the new computer. I say 99% chance it will boot, find drivers and everything will be OK. Murphy's Law says it can fail when you least expect it, so you clean install Windows and copy your data from the backup. But this is the worst case scenario, hopefully it won't happen to you, fingers crossed.

spapakons said:

I agree, Windows 10/11 are more tolerant in hardware changes than older Windows versions. However as a precaution I would first take a full disk backup (or clone it to a spare disk), and then I would connect it to the new computer. I say 99% chance it will boot, find drivers and everything will be OK. Murphy's Law says it can fail when you least expect it, so you clean install Windows and copy your data from the backup. But this is the worst case scenario, hopefully it won't happen to you, fingers crossed.

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And also thanks to Bree.

OK -- I've done some homework. Ten years ago this project would have been a total cluster-f*** ending in a "fresh install" as the only final option.

Apparently, moving from 7th gen Intel (Kaby Lake) to 11th gen Rocket Lake is a stretch, because the NVME storage controller on the Z590 and CPU is different for the later hardware. Thus simply trying to boot from the old NVME stick leads to a BSOD after the initial Win logo screen.

And if SYSPREP fails to validate, there is a very reasonable work-around if you've installed and used Macrium for backup. You first make a new, fresh backup image of the boot drive with Macrium together with a Macrium WinPE Rescue disk, with the latter USB containing the downloaded drivers for the Z590 hardware and motherboard -- particularly a folder in the SATA/RAID zip file named "VMD". You restore your image to the new NVME stick of the new hardware, but before leaving Macrium, you select the "Re-Deploy" tab and inject the storage driver to the boot disk. Then reset and enter the BIOS to confirm configuration as UEFI with Secure Boot enabled and the CSM feature disabled.

The system should then boot properly from the newly restored boot-drive.

I'm going to take more time with this. It is tedious stuff. I really do not prefer a fresh install, given all the software accumulated in that OS drive.

Yes, all BSOD are because of missing drivers for the new hardware. If you manage to inject them before or after moving the disk, then problem solved! I haven't done the injection with Macrium, but in theory, if you have the driver files extracted in a folder, you can copy them to C:\Windows\System32 folder where Windows can find them before booting for the first time. You might also have to copy the respective .inf files in the C:\Windows\Inf folder which is where it looks for drivers for unknown devices.

BonzaiDuck said:

The old hardware and the OEM OS bound to it is a machine registered as one of three or four on my MS Account. I log in to that system in a local account, but it somehow also logs onto my MS Account. For this crap they put on us with the online MS account, I went through several hoops to get my systems to connect again with each other for peer-to-peer sharing -- I think the trouble began when I'd updated another (decommissioned) system from Win 10 to 11 -- the last and final of such updates on old hardware. That's now resolved.

With retail-box as yet unopened, I think I could just register the system as a "new computer" on the MS Account and delete the old registration under the old computer name.

Did I say? I just finished installing the 64GB RAM and TR Grand Macho RT cooler with a new thermal paste from China: Halnjiye HY-P17, which has a thermal conductivity of 17.3 W/m-k. Thermal Grizzly Conductonauit rates at about 70, but it's electrically conductive. Some of the diamond pastes rate below ten.

Well, end of that, done that -- movin' on.

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Login on current pc with an MS account, do same on new pc and follow @Bree's advice as this is the correct solution. All the others do not give the steps you need to take.

PS @Bree is definitely the forum's most informed member on activation issues (and on any subject he participates in comr to that).