Discovered Something Cool About Windows 10

[WhenKittensATK]

My motherboard died in my main rig. I was in the process of planning my trip to Japan in September so I needed the OneNote files on my hard drive. I plugged my OS drive into an external dock on another computer. I left the computer do a Windows Update.  When I came back that computer booted to my OS drive in the external dock. That's pretty amazing, since I'm so used to having to reformat and reinstall Windows on any new machine. Today I swapped out my broken motherboard with another spare. It booted my OS drive as well ^^

 

I thought I share this in case anyone was curious about moving an OS drive with Windows 10. I do have a retail key and its linked to my Microsoft Account if that means anything.

[Guest_Jim_*]

It has been possible to transfer Windows installs between builds for a while now, and I know this because I've done it. I really should do a reformat and reinstall, I know, but this is completely viable. I don't remember which time it was that there were some issues with Windows 10 but installing the latest semi-annual feature update fixed it. Those updates are almost like reinstalling the OS, so whatever was not happy was fixed. For this Threadripper build though the change was enough I did need to contact Microsoft because the license did not want to activate, but that got straightened out. (It was tied to my Microsoft account, but it still would not activate.)

At some point I did find instructions on how to 'disconnect' Windows from the hardware, as in removing the drivers and such that could cause a problem. The idea would be for creating custom images but I think it was also possible for this to be done when going between machines. It has been years since I saw that information though, so I could not tell you where to find it now.