TeraByte Unlimited

Brian K wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2024 12:19 am Does your current computer support UEFI? Your new motherboard might not support MBR.

I think that any mobo will support MBR but I sure recommend UEFI if you agree.

You could be correct. I read support for CSM was on it's last legs.

An update on the upgrade ...

First, thanks to everyone for your advice. @kris455, @BrianK, @OldNavyGuy, @TeraByteSupport -- what I learned from you definitely made the upgrade run smoother.

The hardware upgrade went exceptionally smoothly, and the new system is amazingly fast. All of the drivers were found by Windows and the Gigabyte Control Center automatically. I used IFW multiple times during the process to make backups to an external USB drive at various steps, and once to copy/clone the old hard drive to the new SSD. IFW was extremely easy and straightforward, and did everything I'd hoped it would do. IFW was definitely the right tool for the job!

The only problem I have is licensing. Although slmgr /dli says I have the retail version, I looked through my records and found it is actually the OEM version. Because I don't have a Microsoft account (and do not wish to get one, but that's another story), I could not contact support. I spent many hours searching over the last couple of days to see if I could upgrade.

This site says: "The November Update now describes all licenses upgraded, whether full package or OEM, as retail. Even though your free upgrade to Windows 10 from an OEM Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 is now identified as retail, in spirit, it is still an OEM license."

This 4-year old YouTube video shows an upgrade and activation of Windows 10 that was upgraded from Windows 8.1 OEM, and it was reactivated with the original Windows 8.1 license; however, a comment from 9 months ago says: "After September 29, 2023 Microsoft no longer honors windows 7 or windows 8 keys unfortunately.". This is close to the time of the change described in the previous paragraph.

It seems I'm about a year too late to do a transfer with the original license. I only reasonable conclusion is that I have to buy a new Windows license to be legal, which I'll do tomorrow.

On the positive side, I suppose I could recreate my old machine in another case and use it as a spare Windows box as long as Windows 10 is still supported, and after that convert it to XCP-NG server running Linux boxes. But I probably won't bother.

I just picked up a win10 retail box/key off ebay for ~$48 . They can be had but you have to be careful. OEM keys should be cheap. Yep you can only use them once. I just used an old win 10 retail key to activate a new clean win11 install. Course you never know until you try them!!!

edit just looked, there are a ton on there - guess someone dumped a bunch. They do that! Of course it's always a gamble!!!

I'm a little nervous about going the eBay route. On top of it being a gamble, pretty much all the vendors are in the US and I am in Canada, so there's around C$20 shipping on top of the order, and there might (or might not) be import duties tacked on. I will probably go ahead and pay way too much at the local computer store, but at least I will be confident in what I am getting. Plus I will have it immediately.