Windows 10 Building new computer

[SammyTheBEAST18]

Hello everyone,

I am currently looking for computer parts for a custom built computer that I will make over the summer. I was wondering if I take the hard drive (1TB) from my current computer and put it into my new computer could I still use the free windows 10 upgrade? WIll I have to reset the hard drive before I put it into the new computer or will it recognize that its not the computer windows 10 was installed on and deny me access to it? It would save so much money to not have to buy an os AND a hard drive.

-Sammy

 

[Jimbo22]

Theoretically....Yes. But with a new mobo/cpu a clean install of windows is always recommended. The reason being is you are using all drivers from the previous mobo/cpu and those will likely cause some unwanted errors and/or BSOD's.

 

[Ralph Bromley]

There is a lot to consider, I would actually wait for windows 10 to come out first, make a USB image and if you need to reinstall on newer hardware you can without worrying too much about blue screens.
In the end it hinges on your drivers, me i got lucky when i had to swap my motherboard to a newer one as I never downloaded proprietary drivers for my setup when I reinstalled windows 7 last month (it got kicked off for not having as many security upgrades but since I am taking advantage of the windows free upgrade process it came on again but my old motherboard died literally a week later.)
Best thing to do is remove your drivers for your devices, you have certain hardware like Nvidia or ATI/AMD? Yeah better take the safe route and remove those drivers.
If switching from Intel to AMD or vice versa it should work as long at its in the same architecture, if your computer is older and needed a 32bit install then you have another set of issues depending on your newer ram.
One issue I ran into was my newer motherboard preferring AHCI over my older IDE setup which caused me to have to use a registry editor to switch, not an issue for me as a more experienced user but if you are still new you should check the BIOS settings of your new motherboard before booting into windows.
For the paranoid if you used a Intel based computer stay within intel, and if you use AMD stick with AMD.
I was not personally afraid of this, my windows setup practically saw no real difference when I switched from my old AMD Phenom II X6 to my new core i5 X4, the amount of cores and CPU brand switch caused no viable issues due to me not installing the drivers for my older graphics card, again my issue came from my newer motherboard preferring AHCI over IDE but it did luckily have a setting to change that within the BIOS.
If you need help I have some experience in this as I clearly stated above, I can also aid you in picking out parts for your build depending on what kind of rig you are building.