Windows 10 clone onto new Windows 10 PC

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Gordy7

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#242633 6-Nov-2018 18:12

A friend has a Win10 laptop with munted LAN and USB connectors and also failing video. Wants to keep all files and apps as is.
I am considering doing a Macrium Reflect clone to a new Win10 laptop.
I can also run the clone in the MR virtual machine on the new laptop.
What will happen with Win10 activation in these scenarios?

Gordy

My first ever network connection was a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

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Hammerer

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#2121047 6-Nov-2018 18:47

Cloning Windows is not guaranteed to work particularly if the new computer is too far different from the old one. I'd rather spend the time to install the apps and data on a clean Windows system. Having said that, I haven't tried installing Windows 10 by cloning it - the last time I did this was for Windows 7 - so I don't know how well it works.

Does the new laptop not have a valid Windows license?

The Windows license carries the rights so activation depends upon how the Windows license was originally obtained. Unless you're part of an organisation that controls their licenses then they only seem to provide two options:

when Microsoft 10 account and digital license are linked
when you have a product key, i.e. Windows 10 wasn't preinstalled

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change

Gordy7

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#2121054 6-Nov-2018 18:57

Hopefully my friend will get a similar laptop to the old one that has already been activated.
Maybe once the clone is transferred the new machine will re-activate....
Lots of unknowns....
Of course I have asked myself:
Why no backups?
Why no recovery plan?
Why has the old laptop been treated so poorly?

Gordy

My first ever network connection was a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

richms

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#2121113 6-Nov-2018 19:44

Ive moved an install from an old AMD athlon64 machine to a brand new i3 8100 board and it came up just fine. Then did the conversion to UEFI boot and that also happened fine.

Didnt automatically reactivate since that was a dirt cheap ITX board and CPU to replace a toasted old core 2 quad machine that I then had to upgrade to a bigger board for more slots so had no entitlement in the firmware like a laptop.

Laptops I have cloned have automatically actuivated once online, showed as not activated, went in, pressed to activate, it did its thing and then was activated. No key entry needed. Infact I dont think there was even a key on the machine to enter in.

Richard rich.ms

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#2121564 7-Nov-2018 13:48

I could almost guarantee that faulty Win10 laptop will have a NON-Transferable OEM win10 lic.

So as far as MS are concerned, you cant put it on another PC.
Re-activation does usually work, but if MS say no you're out of luck.
You could always use the Win10 lic from the new laptop to activate though.

You are better off to do a clean install rather than a clone to different hardware, especially with a laptop
You may need to run a bootable CD with special software to fix the clone to different hardware (ie make Win load, remove incompatible drivers etc)

SpartanVXL

843 posts

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#2121583 7-Nov-2018 14:37

It really does depend on a few things.

If its a non-transferable license it will ask to re-activate once you boot the image. Actually if I recall correctly the license is stored in UEFI now. If the new laptop has a valid win10 license then the image will pull that one to use instead of the old one.

Otherwise if the new laptop doesn't have a license then you could try the old hotline method. Call them up and say that hardware failed and you got a replacement but Windows is asking for re-activation.

skewt

667 posts

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#2121610 7-Nov-2018 15:11

This has worked for me in the past but depends how you got your original activation

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-re-activate-windows-10-after-hardware-change