Upgrade to Skylake with out windows reinstall

LostPhoenix

New member
Hi lads and lasses.

As the title suggests. I'd like to upgrade my Sandy rig to Skylake.

The only thing that's stopping me is the prospect of having to clean install my os and all my programs :( im running Windows 10 and have all of my games and apps on a separate drive to my OS. Can i switch out to Skylake without having to reinstall? If so, what do I need to do?

Thanks in advance :)

P.s sorry if I've put this in the wrong place...
 
Windows likes to complain about licensing if you change out your mobo / CPU. I've run into that with XP and 7 and I assume they're just as anal with 10. You get Windows licensed for 1 computer, and if it finds a different motherboard and CPU it'll "detect" that you moved the hard drive into another PC that it's not licensed for. You'll probably be able to re-activate it but it may involve calls to MS support.
 
It would depend on what version of Windows you have, Do you have a OEM copy or Retail.

If you own a Retail copy of Windows you can change the Hardware as much as you want and Windows will not have a belly ache but it's a different story if you have an OEM copy.
 
havent checked.
But if windows 10 still has sysprep you can just use that.
That is not a 100% guarantee though.
out of the 12 or so times i have used it for serious hard ware changes. It has completely screwed me over about twice.
When it does mess you up, then you are looking at a clean install to fix it.
I never reinstall and format a system, i will always fix it.
But of sysprep decided to mess up then you have no choice in the matter, the only fix is to reinstall.

BUT 10/12 is pretty good odds right (its good enough that i would still do it again)

Its pretty straight forward too. you run sysprep tell it to power off when its done.
replace the mb and cpu etx, then turn it back on.
Windows will act like its just that second been installed.
You then make a new user account "NOT ONE WITH THE SAME NAME AS YOU ALREADY WERE USING" ("for example john" is a good name i think)
and log on.
after you did that you can then restart log on to your old account and delete the new one you just made.

when it works its great. i don't even think i had to re activate windows any time i have used it. You are only allowed a set amount of sysprep(s) though. but its all stored in the registry any way so you can edit a few lines if you ever need to use it again.

Google may help i guess. but i do recommend it, with that small warning about the possibilities.
 
Thanks for the replies J
I didn’t even know about sysprep!! I’ve had a dig around on the interweb and it seems like that will do the trick. Also looks like manually removing all of your motherboard related drivers should also work.
I’ll post back once I’m done so the info is on the thread if anyone else ever wants to do the same thing J
Thanks again
 
Ok. It's been a while but I've just finished moving from sandbridge to skylake. :)

The swap was super easy. After a bit of digging around, I did nothing apart from back up what I didn't want to lose (just incase).

Swapped over my hardware and fired up the new system. I got a configuration loading type screen for a couple of minutes and then it loaded to my desktop. All of my programs are running as they were before.

The only thing I had to do was reactivate windows. I followed the options from my desktop for a phone call. Microsoft rang straight away and after the rep logged into my pc I was actived and all good once again.

Overall the process was really quick and really easy.

I went from an Asus sabertooth Z77 to an Asus sabertooth Z170 and run Windows 10.
 
I'd recommend a run on driver sweeper or something similar. It'll help keep everything running smoothly. Windows can do some really dumb stuff sometimes, better to reduce the amount of stuff it can mess up.
 
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