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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
Can you? Yes. Is it legal to do so under our Microsoft overlords? Maybe not. If you have a OEM Windows 11 license it’s officially tied to the hardware and not movable. A retail Windows 11 license is movable.
Then you just back it up to an external hard drive, install the same backup software on the new device, run through the recovery process (you’ll have to set up a boot process).
The easier way (well maybe easier) if you can get to the hard drive in the laptop is to remove it and mount it in the desktop. It will need several reboots but will ultimately settle down and stop wanting to reboot.
But again, what license do you have?
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
See Determine if Windows License Type is OEM, Retail, or Volume for instructions to find your license type.
If I wanted to replace my dinky Dell XPS 9315 with a replacement desktop (both would have W11 Home on them), can I clone the laptop onto the desktop?
I bolded the relevant part of your question. An OEM license for Windows is a license to use an OEM installation of Windows. If I understand you correctly, both of your computers are licensed to run OEM Windows 11 Home, and they will both be running Windows 11 Home, so there is no licensing conflict.
You’re not trying to move a license to an unlicensed machine; you’re trying to move a licensed installation to another machine licensed for the same Windows edition. In the end, both machines will still be licensed to run OEM Home. My guess is that it will take a couple or three reboots to get the desktop the necessary drivers updated and the installation activated.
Having said all that, my advice is to use drive imaging, not cloning, to make the transition. I don’t do clones, but drive imaging has never failed me in such endeavors. I advise making a full drive image of both machines before you do anything else, so that you will have a working fallback solution should something go awry. And you will definitely need bootable media to accomplish this.
OEM licenses are bound to the hardware they were sold on.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
OEM licenses are bound to the hardware they were sold on.
If I understand the OP correctly, his intentions are to transfer his settings, personalizations etc. from an OEM Windows 11 Home laptop to an OEM Windows 11 Home desktop. The OEM Windows 11 Home edition, and therefore the license to use that software, does not change. It’s the same Microsoft Windows 11 Home software that is licensed to the hardware.
The link you supplied references an entirely different scenario of actually wanting to transfer an OEM Windows license. That is not what the OP is asking, again, if I understand him correctly.
In other words, “This OEM computer is licensed to operate Windows 11 Home. Can I operate OEM Windows 11 Home on this computer?” It’s the same software for which the computer hardware is licensed.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3585794/how-to-migrate-to-a-new-windows-pc.html
There is “can it be done” and then there is “does the license agreement that we all don’t read and click through” allow you to do it. An OEM license is tied to the original hardware and is not movable to another computer. The act of taking an image and swapping it – even though it will ABSOLUTELY work and ethically seems quite reasonable, is not officially allowed with an OEM license.
If I were him I wouldn’t go through the bother of disk imaging (as trying to get the dang computer to boot from a flash/external drive can be frustrating at times) – I would – as long as you can find a video on how to pry the laptop apart – I would remove the hard drives from each computer and merely swap them. They will freak out a few times and need to find drivers (most of the time the will find what they need all by themselves) and then they will work beautifully – each in the other container.
Will this work? Absolutely. Is it technically under our Microsoft overlords legal? Everything that I’ve ever been told about OEM licenses over the years says no.
Now mind you – let me throw in another wrinkle that I came across recently that I’m going to write an article about. Someone had a computer with a dead hard drive. I pried the laptop apart, took the old hard drive out, shipped it off to the recovery company (more about this process in a future newsletter) and put in a replacement SSD drive and installed a Windows 10 from the Windows 10 iso download site. It activated just fine because the digital license is tied to the hardware.
Will these swapped hard drives not activate when they will be in totally different motherboards? I think they will still activate, but southieguy will have to let us know for certain.
With Microsoft there is – is it possible? Yes.
Is it allowed under their licensing agreement. Not with an OEM license.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
BTW are both hard drives SSD drives? If one is old fashioned and not SSD you would be better off imaging.
Also if the two devices don’t have the SAME style of hard drive then merely swapping is preferable. If they are two different styles of hard drive and don’t have the cables or connections that are identical then a backup to an external hard drive of course to keep the original intact should they not like this process would be the way to go.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Will these swapped hard drives not activate when they will be in totally different motherboards? I think they will still activate, but southieguy will have to let us know for certain.
With Microsoft there is – is it possible? Yes.
Is it allowed under their licensing agreement. Not with an OEM license.
It’s the device that’s licensed, not the drive. With digital entitlements already stored on Microsoft’s activation servers, what is actually being moved (“transferred”) concerning licenses that you think contravenes the spirit of the agreements if drives (or contents) are swapped?
I’ll try to be clearer: I am trying to bring all my programs and everything else that now runs on my Dell laptop onto a new desktop.
Is the new desktop an OEM PC with Windows 11 Home pre-installed?
I know exactly why you are doing it, but Microsoft has their sliding slope of – is it allowed.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I know exactly why you are doing it, but Microsoft has their sliding slope of – is it allowed.
Is the new desktop an OEM PC with Windows 11 Home pre-installed?
Yes.
There is a very simple answer to Susan’s question. Restore an OEM Windows 11 Home drive image to a PC licensed to run OEM Windows 11 Home. If the PC’s restored installation of OEM Windows 11 Home is activated after a couple or three restarts (to install drivers), it is allowed.
There is no EULA violation for an OEM PC licensed to operate OEM Windows 11 Home, to operate OEM Windows 11 Home. The restored operating system edition is the same as the operating system that the PC is licensed to operate. There is no slippery slope. Commercial software is available to move settings, customizations, installed programs etc. from one PC to another with the same license type.
https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=transfer+programs+and+settings+to+new+pc&atb=v301-1&ia=web
https://blog.macrium.com/how-to-migrate-your-old-pc-to-a-new-one-67af145e5a23
In my experience, using drive imaging is the quickest and simplest method.
“can I clone the laptop onto the desktop?”
I’ll try to be clearer: I am trying to bring all my programs and everything else that now runs on my Dell laptop onto a new desktop. I am trying to avoid having to reinstall all my programs on the new desktop.
Is the new desktop an OEM PC with Windows 11 Home pre-installed?
Yes.
“In Windows 11, it is essential that you link your Microsoft account with the Windows 11 digital license on your device. Linking your Microsoft account with your digital license allows you to reactivate Windows using the Activation troubleshooter whenever you make a significant hardware change.
First, you’ll need to find out if your Microsoft account (What is a Microsoft account?) is linked to your Windows 11 digital license. To find out, select the Start button, then select Settings > System and then select Activation . The activation status message will tell you if your account is linked.”
To satisfy any technicalities, all @southieguy has to do after the transfer is to sign into the desktop with its OOBE account, a Microsoft account since this is Windows 11 Home, which will be the account to which the desktop is linked.
Reinstalling all your software is tedious and tortious. I’ve done it several times and dislike more every time I do it. I’m doing it a little at a time on a laptop now. Ugh.
However, the silver lining has always been that in the hell-hole of redoing everything from scratch I find better ways of doing it that result in more efficient and satisfying use of the new machine.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to move your stuff to avoid reinstalling from scratch. Susan had some great tips! But if it doesn’t work, there is a very high likelihood you’ll have a lasting payback over time.
Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.
I copied my OEM Licensed Windows 10 Pro from a Laptop (with lots of different programs and data on it) to a new Desktop I purchased with OEM Licensed Windows 10 Pro on it with no problem (other that the multiply reboots needed for Windows to update all the drivers.)
As @bbearren pointed out, I didn’t “clone” the SSD on the Laptop, I make an image instead. Then I simply restored that image to the SSD on the new Desktop.
After all the dust settled, the Desktop is now running Windows 10 Pro with all my software still intact and working as expected and the Windows 10 Pro licenses on both PC’s show as “activated with a digital license.”
Also, while both PC’s now have the same Product Key, they each have different Activation ID’s so there’s no OEM license violation.
No.
As others pointed out, an OEM digital license is tied to a specific PC (i.e. the motherboard), not the drive that contains the Windows OS.
When you boot a PC using an Windows OS image from a different PC, one of the things Windows does is connect to Microsoft’s online license verification servers to determine if that particular PC was issued a digital licensed to use the version of Windows installed on it.
As long as the Windows version of the image matches the licensed version recorded for the new PC, Windows will get fully activated. Note: while the activation process usually happens immediately after the first boot up, it can sometimes take 24 hrs or longer; depending on how busy the MS activation servers are.
If the version doesn’t match or the new PC never received a digital licensed to use Windows, the OS will still work but with some restrictions on what you can and can’t do and you’ll be constantly reminded you need to “Activate Windows” with various watermarks and popup notifications.
See What happens if you never activate Windows 11? for details.
BTW, while I didn’t have to deactivate the Windows OS on the Laptop, I did have to deactivate a few of my other software products that were on my Laptop to get them working on the new PC because they were not multi-user licensed (mostly Microsoft products like MS Office.)
I’m a Macrium Reflect user.
You can move a Macrium installation from on PC to another, but it must first be unregistered from the source PC.
On the source PC, open Macrium and click “Help”. You’ll see “Remove License” at the bottom of the dropdown menu.
I’ve done it and it and the steps are clear. Reactivation on the target PC using the same license key was smooth.
Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.
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