Dead PC - move HD to new MBoard and upgrade to windows 10?

Hi all,
Big problem and hope someone can tell me if my solution may work.

My PC is dead - spilt a big glass of water on it. I did everything to get it back, but its dead. I checked on a replacement motherboard but it is so old that I can't find any except one guy who wants almost $400 for it. So I need new hardware and thought I would take advantage of the new Ryzen stuff coming it (the dead pc is a fx-8350). (ryzen is also win10 only)

So my idea - get a new Ryzen MB, CPU & Ram - buy a copy of win10 pro.

Attach the old HD to the new MB but not boot it. Put in the win10 disc and boot to install. In theory it should find my win7 install and upgrade it - keeping all my settings etc. I am hoping that out of this disaster might come a substantial upgrade?

So my Q - would this work? Would it work with this Windows 10 Pro 64-bit-Newegg.com - OEM win10?

Any help appreciated,
Rob

I cannot say much except that....

The drivers will be different for the entire system in the new Windows 10 install. It may upgrade but you will not be able to boot with existing drivers. The smart bet is to simply use your drive as a backup/data drive and upgrade the drive while your at it. I got myself a hybrid drive recently and it is faster than a standard SATA HDD but not as fast as a SDD.

A clean install is always the best bet! I install then go around turning off features I dislike or are not needed for my build. Then slowly install the driver locator software, the browser add-ons, etc. AND if you sync your browser the settings will be there as soon as you install the browser!

I hope this gives you pause and a great second option.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I assumed doing the upgrade from win7 to win10 that the upgrade would end up with win10 drivers? I'm curious if anyone had ever tried something like this. Also - the old system is already on an SSD (samsung pro - nice drive). Under normal circumstances I agree - do a fresh install and move everything over later. Just the idea of moving everything over seems like a pain. What sucks though is that I was planning on moving to Ryzen anyway, while the old PC still exists - much easier to move stuff while the old pc is up and running. But now its dead and I am thinking of the easiest way to make this work.

Thanks,
Rob

When you get down to it Rob the only tough thing to do is simply search for your files on the drive and save them before formatting the drive. - Yeah, I feel your pain but I ran into this issue several times using ghost to rebuild machines at work. Now that said it is not the same thing as installing/upgrading as you want to do. You can simply try it and see how far it gets you into the process of installing and then you will know FOR SURE what procedure to continue with. :)

YOU DONT NEED TO BUY W10

You have a custom rig and should have a RETAIL licence.

Re-install as W7 then go for the upgrade install of W10
AS OF last week they are still giving it away FREE.


Roy

torchwood said:

YOU DONT NEED TO BUY W10

You have a custom rig and should have a RETAIL licence.

Re-install as W7 then go for the upgrade install of W10
AS OF last week they are still giving it away FREE.


Roy

Microsoft has made available the Windows 10 ISO for download. In our last post we saw how you can use Windows 10 Media Creation Tool to create an Installation media. In this post, we will see how to use this Windows 10 ISO to upgrade your Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 computer to Windows 10.
If you upgrade to Windows 10, the new OS will take the product key and activation details from your earlier OS. These are then saved on Microsoft servers, along with your PC details.
If you clean install Windows the first time, you may face activation problems. If you performed an upgrade the first time, activated Windows 10, and then clean installed Windows 10 on the same PC, then there will be no activation issues, as the OS will pull activation details from Microsoft servers.
So, if your Windows 10 isn’t activated, we suggest you not perform a clean install the first time. First Upgrade, Activate and then Clean Install.
You might want to first backup your important data to an external drive before you proceed with the upgrade process. Also make sure you have Windows login password ready. And although you wont need it during the upgrade process, it might be a good idea to find and down your Windows product key somewhere.

MORE INFO HERE

Rob,

You'll need to figure out activation. If you provide Windows 10 with your win7 product key, it will accept it and activate, even if you didn't do the free upgrade last year.

The Windows 10 Disc will not upgrade your old installation. Instead, it will do a clean install of Windows 10 and move your current operating system into a Windows.old folder. If you don't have a way of saving your files off the drive and you need to save them, this is your best bet. Just grab them from the Windows.old folder when the installation finishes.

You can make a win10 disc using ms's media creation tool.

Good luck

This also serves as a bible of sorts for establishing a solid installation and lasting reliability.

also this.

Thanks for the replies. The more I think about it, the more I agree with my first thought on a clean install.

Also - just to be clear - some of the posts reference booting into win7 - the old PC is dead and the new one will be Ryzen - am I incorrect that win7 will not run on the new chips?

Thanks,
Rob

AMD tested and validated Windows 7 on Ryzen, but without official driver support there could be any number of potential unforeseen issues.

We just have to wait as more people use Win 7 with different Ryzen builds and hopefully share their experiences on blogs, youtube, etc.