Windows 10: Buy a no-os pc?

Found a few at Amazon and Newegg. I have a Windows 10 home USB stick which could get me started. Recently purchased an HP Pavilion 570 and found to my horror that it could only house one HD and absolutely will not boot from anything except the system drive. Big question: can I assume that a no-os pc will allow boot from usb? If not, how to install the system?

:)

 

If I buy a new PC with no OS can I transfer Windows 10 from this PC to that one?

I currently own a PC with windows 10. I think it is linked to my Microsoft account but I'm unsure.

I want to buy a new PC, I could spend more money on it and it would come with windows 10 or for about £200 less I could get a version with no OS, if I was to go with the cheaper option, could I transfer Windows 10 from my old PC to the new one (I will not
be using the old PC after the upgrade)? If so, how can it be done?

Original title: Changing PC

 

If I buy a new PC with no OS can I transfer Windows 10 from this PC to that one?

Kindly follow the instructions given by Andre Da Costa on this
thread. He explained the information regarding your question on the comment section.

 

This depends on the BIOS if it has the option to boot from a USB. You may want to look up the BIOS specs/instructions for it before purchasing it.

 

Or a boot manager tool like Plop boot manager (also available with EasyBCD) which will allow USB booting even if the BIOS is not capable.

 

Any PC/laptop, even 10 years old, should be able to boot from USB. But even new ones can have problem booting UEFI, in that case you need to enable legacy mode and use MBR instead.

 

HippsieGypsie, Ah, so. I will do that. Thanks.

Fafhrd, I just removed EasyBCD. It told me it can't work on this machine and advised changes to UEFI which I already had done. I will look at Plop boot manager.

Edit: I've downloaded Plop and read (scanned) the readme. Frankly, I'm nervous about using this on Windows 10 as its creation date is 4/15/13 and it only mentions up to Win 7. Have you (or someone you know) used it on Win 10?

TairikuOkami, I'll have to look up "enable legacy mode and use MBR." If you have any references I'd like to have them.

 

As a boot manager, it runs on the hardware outside the OS, before the OS loads, so it runs as an item on the boot menu. However, as you have found out, you do have to run in the legacy BIOS mode, and not with the UEFI boot.

Reviewing the HP 570, there are several varieties available - can you give the specs? There are storage options from 128 GB SSD right up to 3TB HDD+256GB SSD, and all have DVD writers. The manual leaves much to be desired: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05399708

Here's the relevant Startup screen support:
HP PCs and Tablets - About UEFI and the Startup Menu | HP® Customer Support






You will need to select the legacy boot sources, I guess. Not having the PC in front of me I can go no further.

 

Thanks for your detailed post. If I can find it I will try Legacy. Here's the first page of Belarc's rundown. Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

Edit: I see that this was made before I disabled secure boot.

Edit2: Tried to select Legacy but did not accept it.

 

Do not forget to create a bootable USB with MBR for CSM (Legacy, etc, they use dozens of names).

 

First @tcebob, here's a basic rundown of the machine as at 10 June 2017 in the belarc report run by "Bob":

Model: HP Pavilion Desktop PC 570-p0xx


OS Installed: Windows 10 Home x64 Creators Edition 1703.332 (CB) installed 5th June 2017 with UEFI, Secure Boot


Processor: AMD A10-9700 3.5GHz integrated Radeon R7 10 core (4 CPU, 6 GPU cores) 320KB Primary Cache, 2MB secondary Cache, 64-bit processor.


Storage: 1TB Toshiba DT01ACA100 and a DVD-RW optical drive

Memory: 8GB

Of course anything could have been changed since that report was made.

The question is: what's in and on the machine now?

It looks like those machines can house not only a single HDD, but also a SSD drive too, looking at the range HP has on offer.

I'm guessing if it is non-OS machine now, it will still have a digital entitlement to Windows 10 Home - but is it non-OS?

The serial number is provided, so why not plug that into the HP support pages, and see what help they can give you?

Now you have disabled secure boot, switched the PC off, plugged your Windows 10 USB device in and rebooted to the BIOS, does the BIOS offer you any option to boot from it?

The Optical drive - do you have a bootable DVD with Windows 7, 8, or 10, or a WINPE disk like Kyhi's?

 

I've sometimes found that before I can boot from USB, when shutting down Windows 10 beforehand, I need to switch off Fast-Startup or shutdown with this command: Code: shutdown /s /t 0[/quote] Otherwise the BIOS thinks the PC is still running a hibernated session and won't let you boot into something else.

 

DavidY, Interesting . . . Wait a minute . . .Ok, nothing changed.

Fafhrd: The UEFI has an option to change the boot order. I reset it to usb/optical/hd. Made no difference. I will try HP support for whatever no-os computer I fancy.

 

@tcebob,

How did you make the USB flash drive that you are attempting to boot from? It has to be formatted as FAT32 to boot in UEFI mode.

 

@tcebob - I think you may have received the solution to your problem in an earlier question you posed on the forum:

copy win 10 installation usb to DVD? Solved - Windows 10 Forums

Find the recdisk DVD you made then, boot to it in your DVD drive on the HP, then run setup from your Windows 10 home USB