Confused about multiple Windows licenses, transferring them, and how to go about migr
I have a bit of a mess I am trying to sort through, and most of the guides I am Googling are assuming you want to trash/wipe your current Windows install and/or install new, couldn't find information about what I am trying to do.
Ok, so I have three systems:
1: An i7-3770K Desktop which started with a Windows 7 Pro license and had since been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. (slmgr confirms the license is Retail).
2: An i7-10700K Desktop which currently has no Windows license tied to it.
3: An i7-2XXX era CPU (forgot exact model) Laptop which started as a Windows 8 Home OEM license, but had been replaced with a Windows 7 Pro Retail license... and then upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. This laptop unfortunately appears to be completely fried (So I can't confirm that the license is retail and not OEM with slmgr, but I am about 99% sure it is, unless there is a way I can do it by checking something on the harddrive without booting it? It's HDD is still intact and working fine.).
So my problem is that the 3770K system while it (mostly) works right now.... is giving me a lot of problems. Since it's pretty old anyway and I was able to get a good deal on some newer parts, I built a 10700K system to replace it. Now I just need to migrate my Windows install over. Yes yes yes I know, clean install is better, but I have a LOT of settings and setup I really do not want to start over on, and first I want to see if I can migrate over before doing a clean reinstall.
There are two main things I want to do about this:
So first thing I want to do: De-activate the license on the 3770K system WITHOUT uninstalling/wiping/disabling Windows and transfer that install to the 10700K:
I still want to keep Windows 10 setup as it is on the 3770K system as well however (as I mentioned, almost all the guides I read about license transfer talked about wiping your install). So I want to basically de-activate it, clone the install to a new drive, prepare that cloned install to boot on the 10700K system, and re-activate it on that 10700K system while still keeping the original drive with the original install on the 3770K system. My user account on the computer is not synced online MS account anymore and I really really want to keep it that way (far prefer just having a local account) so I don't know how that will impact trying to transfer the license and activating it on a new system/deactivating it on the old system.
I was told that I can use a tool built into Windows called "sysprep" for this, and that I would need to set it to "oobe" (Out-Of-Box-Experience) mode and then load it on the new system. Anyone familiar with this utility and using it for this reason? From what I could Google, the command I would want to run is "Sysprep /generalize /shutdown /oobe" it would seem? Or are there other parameters I should use for this? And what does this do with the license? Would it also de-activate the license or something? Or is that a separate step I have to do before running sysprep?
Also, what about it still booting across a different drive interface? I know that Windows can't just boot in AHCI mode if it was installed in RAID mode and vice-versa. Said 3770K system was in RAID mode, but I just finished converting it to AHCI mode. The new 10700K system however will run off a NVME. Does Windows 10 have a similar issue going from a SATA drive to a NVME drive? Or can just transferring your install from an AHCI SATA drive to a NVME just work? Would it be better for me to boot the sysprep-prepared install on the 10700K system off a temporary SATA drive... and then once I get that setup and working properly clone it to the NVME?
As for the second thing I want to do:
If I manage to do the above properly, this would still leave me with a 3770K system that would now not have a Windows license. That's where the laptop comes in. While I still want to try to see if I can fix it a little, I am pretty positive that the motherboard sustained physical damage and there is no way I will get it to work again. If that's the case, can't I just use it's license then to re-activate the 3770K system after transferring it's license to the 10700K system? Thing is, like I said, while I have it's HDD in working condition, the system itself is fried, so I have no way to boot it. How would I go about getting the license key or number or whatever I need (I don't have it written down) off the drive? And IF I somehow manage to get it working, can I just revert it back to it's OEM license key then? (Which would require me to revert it back from Pro to Home).
And as for the two things above, would it be easier to de-activate the 3770K system and use it's key to activate the 10700K system and then the laptop's key to re-activate the 3770K system, or would it be easier to leave the 3770K system activated and use the broken laptop's key on the 10700K? The 10700K is the main system I want out of all of this so making sure that gets activated without problems is my main priority, re-activating the 3770K system is secondary. Would the sysprep process to transfer the Windows install even keep the key intact if I tried that or does it treat it like a new install that I have to re-activate? Since if it does, that might lead to some further confusion as I am going to perform sysprep on a drive I will clone off the 3770K so it's install also still remains intact on it's original drive (Which would mean the key would as well unless I manually de-activate it before setting up the transferred install on the 10700K)..... and I want to do all this without my user account on the system being linked (anymore, it used to be) to my MS online account.
So does anyone have any advice on how to go about all this?
