Find an alternative method to swap the motherboard without reinstalling Windows 10.
Find an alternative method to swap the motherboard without reinstalling Windows 10.
About two years back I upgraded my HP Pavilion with a new case, power supply, graphics card and some accessories like an H60 closed loop water cooler. I kept the Pegasus Violet 6 board and AMD Phenom II X4 820. Now my CPU is starting to slow things down and would benefit from a replacement, so I’m planning to install an AMD FX 6300 and an Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 board. The challenge is swapping the motherboard (and CPU) without having to reinstall Windows 10 or reformat the drive. I hope it’s simple enough to just tweak the BIOS and boot from the same disk, but I’m worried about potential issues. Current specs: CPU – AMD Phenom II X4 820 @ 2.8 GHz; GPU – ASUS GTX 660; RAM – 4 x 2GB DDR3; Board – Pegasus Violet 6; HDD – WD Caviar Green 1TB; PSU – Corsair CX 500; OS – Windows 10 Home 64bit (free upgrade from Win 7). Case – Corsair 200R.
Give it a shot, it shouldn't happen, especially with Windows 10.
You'll need a different license because even with the anniversary update, modifying both the motherboard and the processor makes the license no longer valid. It's possible the license might still work after the changes, but you should try anyway without expecting success.