Neat WIndows 10 Trick – Don’t Reinstall the OS

My motherboard crapped out on me recently and I had to get a new processor, RAM, and motherboard. I just finished putting it all together with my old SSD, HDD, GPU, etc, and I accidentally missed entering the BIOS on first ooot. To my utter shock, Windows did a bit of thinking, decided it needed to configure some devices for a minute, and then it booted up flawlessly. Everything is working beautifully. I didn’t have to do a thing.

They might not have gotten everything right with Windows 10, but some of this stuff is just magical.

Conversation 11 comments

  • lwetzel

    Premium Member
    14 June, 2018 - 7:30 pm

    <p>:)</p><p><br></p>

  • TrevorL

    Premium Member
    14 June, 2018 - 11:56 pm

    <p>Activated OK?</p>

    • Daekar

      15 June, 2018 - 4:29 am

      <blockquote><a href="#284363"><em>In reply to TrevorL:</em></a></blockquote><p>At first it had an error, but the troubleshooter fixed it. Not exactly sure what happened in the background. </p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    15 June, 2018 - 8:55 am

    <p>Freakin' awesome. :D</p>

  • Lauren Glenn

    16 June, 2018 - 4:41 am

    <p>Yep. I've been using this method since Windows 8. I used to try to do it WIndows 7 but it would always BSOD unless the boot device was exactly the same as the previous motherboard (which never really happened otherwise why upgrade?)</p><p><br></p><p>I use it when upgrading to a new PC when I can swap drives. As long as the previous installation on the new PC is activated and the same edition, it activates just fine. Saves a lot of install time.</p>

  • david.thunderbird

    18 June, 2018 - 11:54 am

    <p>Tell us in about a month if it needs activation.</p>

    • Daekar

      17 October, 2018 - 3:46 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#284979">In reply to david.thunderbird:</a></em></blockquote><p>No activation trouble several months on. Seems OK.</p>

      • david.thunderbird

        19 October, 2018 - 1:36 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#354330">In reply to Daekar:</a></em></blockquote><p>All thumbs up.</p>

  • ErichK

    Premium Member
    18 June, 2018 - 12:18 pm

    <p>That's cool. I had heard about this, that Windows is now smart enough to adjust itself in the event of a motherboard/CPU swap, but it's nice to see some actual anecdotal evidence that it works.</p>

  • Kevin Costa

    19 October, 2018 - 12:19 pm

    <p>I think <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">this is how it works </span>since Windows Vista/7. The thing that you have to be aware of is to set IDE/AHCI/NVMe correctly inside the BIOS of the new PC, to match the old one (and of course look out if uses Legacy BIOS or UEFI mode). Other than that, the activation is the only thing that you may lose (but Win10 lets you fix this easily most of the time).</p>

  • Sprtfan

    19 October, 2018 - 12:33 pm

    <p>I used to run Sysprep and do this with Windows XP depending on the situation. </p><p>I have swapped out the hard drive on a few Windows 10 installs but typically run into activation issues if something as major as the motherboard was changed. I think it would be a better idea to just reinstall but I have gone this route when I was trying to save some apps or game progress on my kids computers. </p>

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