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Transferring Win10 to different hardware (Read 76846 times)
Brian
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Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Jul 12th, 2016 at 2:22am
 
With previous Windows versions transferring the OS to different hardware could be challenging. I think WinXP was the most difficult as different storage controllers needed different drivers. Win10 is a dream, at least on the few computers I've tested. Just image computer A and restore the image to computer B. Nothing else is needed.

I've done this several times but today the following tests were performed. Computer A is my main computer with Win10 installed in MBR mode. Computer B is my test computer with Win10 installed in UEFI mode. Win10 on computer A was imaged with IFW.

The image from Computer A was restored to Computer B. The disk was converted to GPT. Win10 loaded normally and was automatically Activated as this computer had previously used an Activated Win10 OS.

The UEFI Win10 was restored to Computer B. The disk was converted to MBR. Win10 on computer B was imaged with IFL. (outside Windows as the BIOS wasn't changed to MBR)

The image from Computer B was restored to Computer A. Win10 loaded normally and was automatically Activated as this computer had previously used an Activated Win10 OS.

 
 
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Christer
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #1 - Jul 17th, 2016 at 3:23am
 
@
Brian

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

I assume that the images were of the partition, not the system. If I'm correct, when upgrading several systems to Win 10, it is sufficient to make a single clean installation and restore the image of this clean installation to any BOAC (box of assembled components), as long the receiving system has been activated on Win 10, right?
 

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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #2 - Jul 19th, 2016 at 8:01pm
 
Is it possible to perform a clean install of Win10 via the free upgrade offering for Win7 and Win8.1 users?  I'm currently running Win8.1 and thought the upgrade route was the only option.
 
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #3 - Jul 19th, 2016 at 9:14pm
 
Tator wrote on Jul 19th, 2016 at 8:01pm:
Is it possible to perform a clean install of Win10 via the free upgrade offering for Win7 and Win8.1 users?


Yes. You can perform that with these two steps:

    (1a) first install the Win10 upgrade, which will fingerprint your system and activate Win10 with MS's servers.

    (1b) Then you can wipe the HDD and do a fully clean install from scratch, which will still be recognized as activated because of the prior fingerprinting.

Another way is this:

    (2a) first install the Win10 upgrade, which will fingerprint your system and activate Win10 with MS's servers. During the installation process you'll be prompted whether you want to preserve your settings and data. Choose "NO".

    (2b) after installation you'll be left with a clean install and the old 7/8.x system in a "windows.old" folder. Delete that (boot 10 and do a "disk cleanup") and you've got essentially the same thing as a clean install.


The same installation media can be used for upgrading or a clean install. I upgrade by booting into the existing 7/8.x and then launching setup.exe from the installation media, but I've read you can also upgrade by booting from the installation media and selecting "Upgrade" from the first menu. So that's a third way of doing it.

Building the upgrade media consists of downloading an iso and then burning it to DVD or creating a bootable flash drive (via a special utility). I prefer the former, though I think Brian prefers the latter.
 
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #4 - Jul 19th, 2016 at 10:12pm
 
Christer wrote on Jul 17th, 2016 at 3:23am:
I assume that the images were of the partition, not the system.


That would be my interpretation of what Brian is doing. (I believe he's away this week, but he'll probably fill in the details when he gets back.)

A partition, whether GPT or MBR, is just a group of disk sectors, and Windows doesn't really care which partitioning scheme it runs on. Once Windows boots, all partitions look the same to Windows--just blocks of a certain number of sectors starting at a particular absolute sector number. That's how partitions are defined in the [MountedDevices] registry key. They're not defined in the registry as GPT, MBR, primary or extended.

The difference between GPT and MBR isn't the partitions themselves, it's the layout scheme describing how to find them. Windows is only concerned with GPT/MBR to the extent, during the boot process, of determining the appropriate scheme to follow to locate where those blocks of sectors are that make up the partitions.

Thus, there's really no substantive difference between an image of a GPT partition vs. a MBR partition. They're both just images of a groups of sectors.

On several occasions I have converted Win8.x/10 systems from GPT to MBR by imaging the GPT OS partition, erasing the hard disk to remove the GPT layout, recreating MBR partitions, then restoring the OS image to one of the new partitions. (As you may guess, I prefer MBR partition layouts over GPT.) Partitions are partitions, so it works fine--and it doesn't surprise me at all that Brian has gone back and forth between GPT and MBR partitioning schemes without a problem.

Caveat: you may have to edit the BCD so that Windows knows were you moved itself to, depending on how the original BCD was configured and whether or not auxiliary partitions are being used (SRP, EFI, MSR, etc.) and where they are. But again, that issue is the same whether you're using GPT or MBR.

I think the intriguing part of Brian's post was Win10's flexibility in dealing with dissimilar hardware, not the GPT vs MBR issue.
 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #5 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 4:16am
 
Dan Goodell wrote on Jul 19th, 2016 at 10:12pm:
I think the intriguing part of Brian's post was Win10's flexibility in dealing with dissimilar hardware, not the GPT vs MBR issue.


Yes, I understand. I have always installed Windows clean and off-line (neither Firewall nor Anti Virus installed), having downloaded the needed drivers in advance. I think that approach will become "history" since the Windows 10 installer is good at finding what's needed. The built-in Firewall and Defender is good enough protection during the installation.
 

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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #6 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 11:19am
 
I've read some who upgrade to Win10 have problems reverting to Win7 or Win8.1 when problems are encountered with Win10.  Would simply restoring a backup image of my Win8.1 avoid such problems should Win10 problems arise, or is there another good method to return to the previous OS if needed?
 
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #7 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 12:33pm
 
Tator wrote on Jul 20th, 2016 at 11:19am:
I've read some who upgrade to Win10 have problems reverting to Win7 or Win8.1 when problems are encountered with Win10.  Would simply restoring a backup image of my Win8.1 avoid such problems?

Yes, and IMO that's the best strategy. Trying to surgically undo what the Win10 upgrade did will never be as foolproof as nuking the whole thing and restoring a backup image of your prior system.

The purpose of the windows.old folder is ostensibly so you can undo the upgrade--and Win10 will warn you that deleting it will prevent Windows from rolling itself back to your old OS. But if you've got a good backup image that's a more reliable strategy anyway, so I never hesitate to get rid of windows.old.

In fact, imaging is what Brian and I (among many others) recommend doing, even if you're not yet sold on Win10. You've got about a week left for the free ugrade offer, so if your system is Win10 capable, perform the upgrade to get your system fingerprinted. Then make an image of the Win10 system (if you want--that step is optional because once fingerprinted you could do a clean install in the future if you prefer) and restore your previous system from a backup image. That way, you won't have to commit to Win10 now but will have it "in the bank", so to speak.

BTW, in case this wasn't clear from earlier discussions, upgrading an existing MBR system will still leave you with a MBR partition layout. Thus, it's relatively trivial to revert to your old system via a backup image.

If upgrading a MBR system you'll still end up with a MBR layout, while upgrading a GPT system (e.g., an OEM Win 8.x system) will end up GPT. If clean installing on a blank hard disk, the Win10 installer will create a GPT layout. If you start with a blank disk and create a MBR layout first, Win10 can be clean installed as a MBR system.

(FWIW, I prefer MBR systems because then I can use all my old multibooting tricks.)
 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #8 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 1:12pm
 
My Win8.1 is OEM, and I have it setup to dual boot WinXP.  Will I still be able to dual boot after upgrade, or do I need to somehow convert current Win8.1 from GPT to MBR layout?  Also will reverting to Win8.1 by restoring its image still work if my system is currently GPT?
 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #9 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 2:26pm
 
I don't use GPT, so I really don't know. I'll guess you must be multibooting via BCD? That's just too messy and entangling for me. Brian is more knowledgable with GPT, so he may be able to tell you.

But until he gets back, my guess would be that, at most, you'd need to restore your Win8 partition (that you overwrote with Win10) and perhaps your startup partitions (EFI, MSR and MS Recovery) since Win10 may have tampered with them. If you're lucky, you might get away with just restoring the Win8 partition. I can't imagine you'd need to restore your XP or data partitions.

 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #10 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 8:40pm
 
I think I may have an MBR system after all because I remember running commands like "Fix MBR" from the WinXP recovery console.  Is there a way to determine which system type I have?  Have you any idea when Brain will be back?

I can tell you what was done if that might help determine system type.  I'm sure I don't use BCD since Windows Setup is the only thing I've used to setup systems.  I was multi-booting Win98/Win2k/WinXP until about 3 years ago when motherboard was upgraded that no longer supports Windows older than WinXP.  About 2 years ago I did a clean install of Win8.1 and setup the dual boot wonXP/Win8.1.  At that time BIOS SATA setting had to be set to IDE mode in order for WinXP to boot.  However, I noticed recently that setting was changed to AHCI mode, and WinXP still boots.  I don't know if a Windows update could have made the change from IDE to AHCI, but I did not change it myself.  This may be more detail than needed, but I hope it's useful info.
 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #11 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 9:14pm
 
If you installed 8.1 on a hard disk that already had XP in another partition, you almost certainly have a MBR system.

You can tell for sure with the Disk Management applet. In 8.1 right-click "This PC" and select "Manage" from the pop-up context menu. (Alternatively, you can type "diskmgmt.msc" in the Search box to launch the applet directly.)

The lower part of the Disk Management window will display a schematic bar graph of your disk's partitions. At the far left of that bar graph, right-click the label (where it says "Disk x") and select "Properties" from the pop-up menu. In the Properties window, select the "Volumes" tab. Under that tab you'll find "Partition style" listed.


p.s.: I think Brian is just off fishing for the week.


 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #12 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 2:07am
 
Quote:
If you installed 8.1 on a hard disk that already had XP in another partition, you almost certainly have a MBR system.


If Win8.1 is anything like Win7 in this respect:

I run a dual boot of WinXP and Win7. WinXP went on first and the HDD was partitioned in three, two primary partitions (XP and 7) and an extended with a logical (data). When Win7 was installed, it created the dual boot.

With no free space on the HDD, a system reserved partition was not created. All those files ended up on the WinXP partition.

After having upgraded Win7 to Win10 and kept the dual boot, I created new images of both system partitions. I can't restore the original WinXP partition and the new Win10 partition. The system doesn't boot Win 10. They have to be synchronised.

My recommendation is to create two sets of images, one before and one after the upgrade to Win10.
 

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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #13 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 5:35pm
 
Dan Goodell, thanks for that info.  It odes show MBR for Partition style.

Christer, I already have the before images and plan to create images after upgrade.  Then I can restore both before images if I decide to go back to Win8.1.  This necessary I think because dual boot Win8.1 made changes to the WinXP partition with files needed to boot Win8.1, and Win10 will make changes to WinXP partition with files needed to boot Win10.  This makes it absolutely necessary to have the WinXP image that corresponds to the later Windows version being run.  I learned from http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/how-to-upgrade-windows-10 the upgrade can be done using USB or DVD media and is recommended when there's more than 1 upgrade to be done.

I'm hoping Win10 will work well since it'll have support longer than Win8.1.  This is especially important to me since I run QuickBooks acciounting that stopped WinXP support with its 2015 version, and I know it's only a matter of time until later Windows version support is stopped as well.  I've read in other forums discussion and debate about Microsoft charging a monthly fee for Win10 use.  Some say that's for Enterprise version only while others ponder whether it may include all Win10 version in the future.  Does anybody here know anything about this?   
 
 
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Re: Transferring Win10 to different hardware
Reply #14 - Jul 24th, 2016 at 7:22am
 
According to the DonoftheDead reply at https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30884335-WIN10-Win-10-Free-Upgrade-Ending-July... going back to Win7/8.1 from a Win10 upgrade after 7/29 would require purchase of a new license.  Does anybody know if that is true and if it applies even if Win7/8.1 images are restored instead of using the Windows reversion option?  In that same thread it is stated there is no control over Windows updates in Win10?  Is this true?   
 
 
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