Upgrading from Win 10 to Win 11 questions

DJG · Mar 11, 2024

My quandary is I need to replace my motherboard and CPU. The new one is Win 11 safe. When I install the new setup with my Win 10 system the OS will complain.

Will I be able to upgrade the OS from 10 to 11 while retaining all my original settings and apps using some downloadable version of Win 11? My Win10 version is Windows 10 Pro x64 22H2 19045.4123.

Any suggestions or insights are greatly appreciated.

zbook · Mar 11, 2024

Possible potential problems:

a) reactivation after major hardware change

Reactivating Windows after a hardware change - Microsoft Support

Learn how to prepare your Windows device for a hardware change and find help reactivating Windows after a hardware change is complete.

support.microsoft.com

b) Windows 10 (non DCH drivers) to Windows 11 (DCH drivers)

c) any parameters: Meet Windows 11: Features, Look, Benefits & More | Microsoft

glasskuter · Mar 12, 2024

In the case of MB change, you probably will lose activation in 10. I suggest you get the 10 license activated before moving on to 11. You could run into an issue. It will all depend on if the 10 machine activated with a 7 or 8 license (MS doesn't accept those anymore for 10)or if you purchased a 10 license for the machine. It also depends on if the digital license is tied to your MS account. If it's the latter, hopefully the troubleshooter will activate 10 after the change, but as screwy as MS has been handling activation for some who used old licenses, I wouldn't guarantee it..

Reactivating Windows after a hardware change - Microsoft Support

Learn how to prepare your Windows device for a hardware change and find help reactivating Windows after a hardware change is complete.

support.microsoft.com

DJG · Mar 13, 2024

Well, I decided to put the new MB in a new chassis, this time air cooled, as the new CPU speed is just fine for my current needs and I'm getting way too old for really complicated hobbies

I'll use my current water cooled system setup as guide for the new one.

Thank you for your insights!

Ghot · Mar 13, 2024

@DJG

As mentioned above... the main issue will be activation, due to the new motherboard.
After the hardware upgrade, get Win 10 activated... first.

Then... just do an In-Place Upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11...

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

Here is the short version of the In-place upgrade tutorial...

DISABLE non-Microsoft:
a) antivirus software
b) firewall software
c) drive encryption software

Make a full OS backup with a program like Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper Standard
Making a backup is optional, but always a smart move.
Macrium Reflect
AOMEI Backupper Standard (free)

Get the Windows 11 ISO (Option #2), and save it to your desktop...

Right click the ISO image and choose: MOUNT
Open File Explorer and you will see a new drive letter. It will "look" like a DVD optical drive.
Double click the new drive letter to open it.
Find setup.exe and double click it to start the in-place upgrade.

Choose the Keep personal files and apps option.

After it's all done... to UNmount the ISO image, right click the new drive letter and choose: EJECT.

The ONLY thing you will lose is some of your personalizations.
Your drivers, programs and data will be intact.

=================================================================================

When you're ON Windows 11... make sure to check Device Manager for any possible driver issues.

And... here's some things that may be useful....

Quickie Eleven Forum Setup Guide for new Members

Quickie Interface tour... Quickie set up... At the top right, click on your name, then choose "Preferences". Then go through everything on the left side. Quickie navigation... Click Forums and choose a subforum, OR... Click Forums, then New Posts or What's New Ranks, Trophies...

www.elevenforum.com

Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper and Hasleo Backup Suite - GUIDES

How to use backup software... 1. When everything is working perfectly... make a full Windows backup. 2. Then, if something breaks... restore from the latest backup. 3. Then... try "whatever you were doing" a different way. If it still breaks Windows, then... go to step #2. 4. Repeat...

www.elevenforum.com

Windows 11 Tweaks - Leader Board.

These are tweaks I've seen asked for... many times. They are collected here for easy access. All of these and more can be found in the Eleven Forum Tutorials Classic context menus... https://www.elevenforum.com/t/disable-show-more-options-context-menu-in-windows-11.1589/ Change...

www.elevenforum.com

And... last but not least... Welcome to ElevenForum.

Ghot · Mar 14, 2024

@DJG

Well... are you on Windows 11 now?

DJG · Mar 14, 2024

Ghot said:
@DJG

As mentioned above... the main issue will be activation, due to the new motherboard.
After the hardware upgrade, get Win 10 activated... first.

Then... just do an In-Place Upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11...

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

Here is the short version of the In-place upgrade tutorial...

DISABLE non-Microsoft:
a) antivirus software
b) firewall software
c) drive encryption software

Make a full OS backup with a program like Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper Standard
Making a backup is optional, but always a smart move.
Macrium Reflect
AOMEI Backupper Standard (free)

Get the Windows 11 ISO (Option #2), and save it to your desktop...

Right click the ISO image and choose: MOUNT
Open File Explorer and you will see a new drive letter. It will "look" like a DVD optical drive.
Double click the new drive letter to open it.
Find setup.exe and double click it to start the in-place upgrade.

Choose the Keep personal files and apps option.

After it's all done... to UNmount the ISO image, right click the new drive letter and choose: EJECT.

The ONLY thing you will lose is some of your personalizations.
Your drivers, programs and data will be intact.

=================================================================================

When you're ON Windows 11... make sure to check Device Manager for any possible driver issues.

And... here's some things that may be useful....

Quickie Eleven Forum Setup Guide for new Members

Quickie Interface tour... Quickie set up... At the top right, click on your name, then choose "Preferences". Then go through everything on the left side. Quickie navigation... Click Forums and choose a subforum, OR... Click Forums, then New Posts or What's New Ranks, Trophies...

www.elevenforum.com

Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper and Hasleo Backup Suite - GUIDES

How to use backup software... 1. When everything is working perfectly... make a full Windows backup. 2. Then, if something breaks... restore from the latest backup. 3. Then... try "whatever you were doing" a different way. If it still breaks Windows, then... go to step #2. 4. Repeat...

www.elevenforum.com

Windows 11 Tweaks - Leader Board.

These are tweaks I've seen asked for... many times. They are collected here for easy access. All of these and more can be found in the Eleven Forum Tutorials Classic context menus... https://www.elevenforum.com/t/disable-show-more-options-context-menu-in-windows-11.1589/ Change...

www.elevenforum.com

And... last but not least... Welcome to ElevenForum.

Wow, thank you so much! I'll be using a lot of this once I get the hardware all sorted out.

I'll get back once I get the process done, however it turns out. Still, every time I think Eleven I can't help seeing Eleven from Stranger Things ...

DJG · Mar 14, 2024

Ghot said:
@DJG

Well... are you on Windows 11 now?

Not quite

Ghot · Mar 14, 2024

Well I gave you ten cookies... just for filling out your specs... properly. ^^
You'd be surprised how few people do that.

DJG · Mar 14, 2024

Ghot said:
Well I gave you ten cookies... just for filling out your specs... properly. ^^
You'd be surprised how few people do that.

Thanks! No wonder I thought I was getting full! I'll be doing a total revamp of those specs in a couple of weeks.

Ghot · Mar 14, 2024

DJG said:
Thanks! No wonder I thought I was getting full! I'll be doing a total revamp of those specs in a couple of weeks.

Make sure you go through the "Quickie Eleven Forum Setup Guide for new Members" link up above.
There are quite a few things that are different than they were on Ten Forums.

Same staff as on Ten Forums... but different forum software.

DJG · Mar 14, 2024

I did notice Brink's name ... and here's my AIDA OSD

Ghot · Mar 14, 2024

DJG said:
I did notice Brink's name ... and here's my AIDA OSD

View attachment 90118

I just have a little OSD.

DJG · Mar 14, 2024

Ghot said:
I just have a little OSD.

View attachment 90119

My new system's probably is going to be more like that!

And finally I can change my sig!

DJG · Apr 4, 2024

Well, I have great news and not so great news. The new chassis with the new air-cooled CPU and motherboard is up and running beautifully. And loading my old system's WIndows10 from a backup came up and has been working great without needing re-activation. I'm happily puzzled.

First boot Windows had a few messages about getting some things properly set up and wham, login screen then happily logged in! The only thing I had to do myself was download and install the Ethernet driver. Probably because it was a newer ROG Strix MB which my old one was, Windows was good to go except for that one driver.

Unfortunately, upgrading it to Win 11 using the retail Win Pro on the USB drive, it went on for a while but in the end when finally logging in it said it couldn't upgrade successfully because some booting problem. Could Kaspersky do that? I think it's probably my lack of recovery environment, fails like the security update does

.

Any ideas will be welcome

Ghot · Apr 4, 2024

DJG said:
Unfortunately, upgrading it to Win 11 using the retail Win Pro on the USB drive, it went on for a while but in the end when finally logging in it said it couldn't upgrade successfully because some booting problem.

Try this instead....

Do an In-Place Upgrade to get from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It's the same as a normal In-Place Upgrade on Windows 10... but we'll use the Win 11 ISO image....

Use Option #2... use a freshly downloaded ISO image (not the USB stick).

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

Use the full tutorial linked above. When it gets to the Updates part... tell it "not right now".

Also... tell it to "Keep Programs and Data".

DJG · Apr 4, 2024

I use Paragon Hard Disk Mgr for my backups, works great. Isn't the Win 11 ISO the same as the one they have in a USB? I pretty much did that except Kaspersky was on.

I'll try killing Kaspersky and see what happens. Thanks!

Ghot · Apr 4, 2024

DJG said:
I use Paragon Hard Disk Mgr for my backups, works great. Isn't the Win 11 ISO the same as the one they have in a USB? I pretty much did that except Kaspersky was on.

I'll try killing Kaspersky and see what happens. Thanks!

Depends on when you made the USB stick.
Even if you just made it today... the ISO's may be different. MS sleight of hand, doncha know.

I would still use the bare ISO image. (I seem to remember that the bare ISO image was the latest version).
That's the way I did it, and it worked fine.

The reason I asked about MR was that it has a "Fix boot problems" tool on it's bootable media.
But that's for fixing Windows that won't boot. Not for fixing failed upgrade due to some mysterious boot issue.

P.S. I don't have a recovery partition either. And it worked for me.

Use the full tutorial linked above. When it gets to the Updates part... tell it "not right now".

If you have it set the "check for updates" ... it may be failing because some update is failing.

Also... tell it to "Keep Programs and Data".

Make sure to DISABLE non-Microsoft:
a) antivirus software
b) firewall software
c) drive encryption software

I'm assuming you're on a GPT disk and running the BIOS in UEFI mode.

Ghot · Apr 4, 2024

@DJG

Are you still on the X99 board, or on a new motherboard?
If you're on a different motherboard than in your specs... we need to know which motherboard.

DJG · Apr 5, 2024

- I didn't make the USB, the USB is the Microsoft USB with the resale Win 11 Pro, bought from Newegg.
- X99 MB is no longer, I'm in the new ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING WIFI. The X99 Win 10 backup worked great on it with no activation necessary, weird.
- I'm on an NVME disk running the BIOS in UEFI mode.
- Kaspersky was disabled.
- I did tell it to do the updates, maybe that was the mistake. I'll try again without them.