Windows 10: Need some confusion cleared up about migrating to a new system.

So I've made the mistake of upgrading to 10 on two of my systems when I had the intention of building a new computer this winter and cycling them so I'm stuck in a bit of a predicament.

Basically, I own a recording studio and one of the things I do is cycle my computers as I upgrade. The recording studio gets the new machine, I adopt the recording studios previous machine and give my current machine to my wife. My wifes computer is the only one I didn't get around to upgrading and so swapping hers out will be cake. The other two though I've read will be much harder, if not impossible to do.

When I built both machines, I did so with OEM Windows 7 which leads to my first question: I got my upgrade to Windows 8 directly through Microsoft and I'm unsure what kind of key was given to me. Is there a way to see whether the key I bought for Windows 8 is considered still OEM or not since I'd be able to reregister my current upgrade if it's a normal key?

Second thing... the downtime on my studio is not good for clients. Being that I have 10 installed already on it, having to do the whole upgrade process over again as well as prep the system and reinstall everything isn't an option. Is there any way around having to do that even if it means buying a new key for it? I can take the time on my personal machine to go through all that again, but not the studio as I have over 200 applications that would need to be reinstalled. I'd much rather avoid it with both but eh...

Thanks for taking the time to read.

:)

 

migrate my sent items from Windows Phone 8.1

Hi Maella,

Yes I can. The story is, that I have this mailbox subscription from ages. Since it was always with small mailbox sizes, I used to configure my clients (Outlook, smartphones, tablet) with POP3. Outlook is only for downloading and clearing up the old items,
other clients does not clear up the downloaded items, just download them. For about half a year ago I got free disk space (large quota) on the mailboxes, from that time on there is no need for clearing up the items, an IMAP connection would be perfect, I just
could not reset the clients from POP3 to IMAP. Instead nowadays I would migrate to Exchange Online, so I am about to collect as much previous mail items as possible, including sent items.

So yes, I have large number of inbox items, no problem to migrate, I have some sent items in the mailbox, I can manage to migrate them as well, I have some - many sent items on smartphones, currently unable to migrate.

What is in your mind, do you have some idea to manage getting sent items out of the smartphones?

Thanks

Tyke

 

migrating a windows 10 system to a new ssd

Your new SSD may likely have come with software to help you transfer. I never like to rely on those though, and I personally prefer to do a clean install so there's no cruft or junk. It takes about 15 minutes to install Windows, another 30 to install
Office/browsers/development environments I care about, and maybe another 30 for the remainder. So at the cost of about 2 hours, it's a lot more straightforward and less error prone than trying to transfer it otherwise.

 

Hello Mystic and welcome to the forum *Smile

You can see all your license details with ShowKeyPlus

 

I'm not clear on what you wish to do.

Do you want to move the Windows installation, complete with all installed applications, onto new PC hardware?

That's not something I have ever done. I know that Acronis True Image has a utility available which is supposed to permit restoration onto hardware that is entirely different from the hardware that had its drive imaged, but I don't know how likely that is to succeed.

If you did that with a Win 10 upgrade, it wouldn't activate, though. The activation is linked to the hardware. You'd have to buy a retail key. ($199US for Pro.)

It is possible to clean install Windows 8.1 onto a new hard drive and activate it using a Windows 8 upgrade license. (The one that was $40US for the Win 8 pre-release.) I have done it to avoid having to re-install the qualifying OS (Windows 7 in my case). I won't describe the method here because it could be used for what Microsoft calls casual piracy. You could then upgrade 8.1 to 10 using the free upgrade (until 7/29/2016). You'd still be stuck with re-installing all of your 200+ applications.

I'm surprised that you're upgrading the OS on your bread-and-butter system. It seems like the potential risks with drivers and software compatibility issues would make you reluctant to try that. (If you are already running Windows 8.1, the pain of upgrading ought to be minimal, I guess. From Windows 7, the story might be much worse.)

 

Why was that a mistake? The upgrade to Windows 10 has nothing to do with license status, really.

Read the End Users License Agreement (EULA). When you pay a reduced price for an upgrade license, instead of paying full price for a retail license, the upgrade license that you get retains the same properties as the license the upgrade was based on. Since the original license was OEM Windows 7, the resulting Windows 8 upgrade license would be OEM as well - thus only valid on the computer on which it was installed. Then the following upgrade to Windows 10 would also remain an OEM license.

This is where it gets confusing. What are you wanting to do with the studio computer? Since it seems like it was originally built with a Windows 7 OEM license (if I am reading this correctly) than the Windows software that is on that computer stays with the computer - Windows 7 upgraded to Windows 8 upgraded to Windows 10 - unless you purchased a new full retail license, the original OEM license remains an OEM license through the upgrades.

Now, are you talking about a new computer for the studio? That will require a new license for Windows. No matter how or what kind of license you get for a new computer, it seems like you want to clone the existing computer to the new one? Not a good idea since the hardware will likely be vastly different and you should start from scratch to begin with. But, what I think you are asking is let's say the new computer gets installed with a Windows 7 with an OEM license. You will have to upgrade that to Windows 10, which will also have an OEM license. Once that is done and activated, then you could clone the old computer to the new one and it should activate based upon the previous activation of Windows 10 on the new computer. The image cloned over from the old computer to the new computer will assume the license that was previously used on the new computer.

But-am I missing something here about down time? If you get a new computer, why can't you just continue to use the old computer in the studio until the new one is 100% fully installed and ready to go and the only down time is swapping the cabling?

 

Basically I'm getting all new hardware including updating to an SSD. I've done this many times before by using a program such as Acronis or CloneZilla to make an exact mirror of my HDD if say, I was moving from a 1TB drive to a 2TB drive. Once done, you pop the new drive in and it works exactly as the old one did. Was quite simple to do and I would be back up and running in no time at all.

The problem is that Windows 10, rather than using a key like previous OS's, now attaches itself to the hardware therefore making it much harder to swap out existing hardware for newer stuff which prevents activation. The SSD won't be the issue though, the issue will come because I'm doing a major upgrade to the motherboard and processor.

I've always been an early adopter of Windows and have had very minimal problems apart from the move from XP to Vista but all things considered, most of the major issues were sorted quite quickly. Most professional hardware companies are on the ball with getting drivers for their stuff out the week of release so there isn't too much issue but the benefits, especially from Win 7 through 10, have outweighed the disadvantages. Things like how Windows handles resources are very important when dealing with 200 tracks of audio and with each upgrade, they have made considerable leaps forward there.

 

Because had we known from the first week that we wouldn't be able to swap important pieces of hardware, I wouldn't have upgraded right away knowing that I was going to be building new systems this fall. It may have been mentioned subtly at some point but there was a lot of confusion at the time with what Microsoft was really doing.

Yes, this was built with a Win7 OEM key. That's one of the things I was wondering there. I wasn't sure if the upgrade during the $40 promo would remain OEM or if it would switch over to what we would consider a retail key that could be moved to a new system without issue.

So let's say that I build my new computer completely from scratch and clone the HDD so everything is installed and in it's proper place like it is on the current system. Obviously when I turn the computer on it's going to go "HEY! This isn't the computer we installed on!" and deactivate. Couldn't I then in theory buy a retail or new OEM key and add that when it goes unregistered so it becomes a new registered copy without having to do a complete format?

Also, this begs the question, since I am adopting the studio as my personal computer and my current personal computer is going to my wife, wouldn't that mean I can keep Windows 10 installed on both of those and activated since those systems aren't at all changing and only change the Microsoft Accounts that log into them? My one concern there is that by changing the account that logs in, it will deactivate but if the license is for the computer itself, it shouldn't do that. Am I right in that assumption?

I suppose I can do that if I absolutely needed to. It's just a huge pain because when I upgraded to 10, it took me literally a week, working full 10 to 12 hour days to install everything back on and get it all setup which meant I was completely down and not getting clients work done.

 

Thanks for posting that. Will take a look at it. *Smile

 

Yes.

Again, yes. Activation is for the computer, not for the user accounts. You can add a new user account, delete the old user account, doesn't matter if they are Microsoft account logins or not - the activation will be unaffected. You can even clean install on a completely wiped hard drive and log in with only a brand new local account and it will retrieve the computer's activation stored on Microsoft activation servers and activate itself.

Since you will need an additional license to stay legal anyways.... I've seen OEM Windows 10 Pro licenses for $99.

 

Well I was going to ask almost the same question as Mystic did. But I think NavyLCDR answered my questions on OEM vs Retail.

I just bought a used computer. It comes with Windows 10 Home oem already installed. Problem is I have no use for any Home version. Previous OS was Windows 8.1 Home. Ewww. Sooo What I was thinking is either delete everything on the hard drive then
install my copy of Windows 10 Pro, and activate by buying a retail license OR If it would work, Enter a valid Windows 10 Pro retail license key.
Big Question being Can a Retail PRO license key activate a home oem install???? BTY I can get a really good price on the Retail Pro key. I was thinking that Windows 10 Home OEM could NOT be activated by using a Windows 10 Pro retail key.
What do ya think????

 

A Windows 10 Home install cannot be activated with a Pro key. But it can be upgraded to Pro using the purchased Pro key.

 

Ahhh what you just typed don't make any sense??? But, I think I understand what I need to do. In order to upgrade the system to Windows 10 Pro, I need to remove the existing OS then install a Window 10 Pro OS, and THEN use the Retail key to activate.

 

Because I am changing the OS from OEM to Retail, only way is to remove the OEM version and fresh install a Retail version with a valid key. I think this is the correct way.

 

No. You can change from OEM to Retail by just going to Activation under settings and enter the new product key. But there really is no need to change from OEM to Retail on one that is already installed and activated.

Going from Home to Pro you just need to run the Windows Pro setup.exe just like you would upgrading any Windows to Windows 10 Pro - when it asks you for a Product Key, you enter your purchased Windows 10 Pro key. It will upgrade to Pro, not clean install that way.