Change motherboard without reinstalling windows (keys to keep in mind)

Surely we all love it when it comes to updating the hardware of our computer, and then a question arises: can I change the motherboard without reinstalling Windows ? And the answer to this will always be yes, it is possible, but we must keep in mind a few things that perhaps many of us have ever overlooked.

Index of contents

So we have set out to make this article to refresh each other's ideas and thus know what the consequences will be of updating an element as important as our motherboard. Especially when it comes to equipment that has been purchased already assembled.

Can I change motherboard without reinstalling Windows 10?

As I have indicated before in the introduction, yes it is possible, in fact, it will be the most normal. And the answer to this is very simple, all the devices of our computer are connected to the motherboard, including the hard disk, which will be where the operating system will be installed.

This means that we can easily disconnect all these components, remove the board and install the new one. Later we will reconnect our hard drive and others, and the update will have been completed, although of course, sometimes it will not be as simple as this.

Yes, but it will depend on the operating system

At this point, we must be aware of what operating system we have installed on our computer. It is not the same to have a Windows system, a Linux, much less a Mac, and it will also be important to know what version of system we have.

In the case of Mac, it will be simple, better to leave everything as it is, no user of this platform will come up with the idea of ​​changing their basic hardware, after spending a real fortune on the computer. And the truth is that we do not have extensive knowledge of this system either.

In the case of Linux, it will be easier, especially in its newer versions of desktop-based systems, since in their repositories they have the necessary drivers, in most cases to detect and install connected devices without problems. We talk about CPU, RAM, sound card or the characteristics of our motherboard.

This is extensible to Windows systems, although beware, from Windows Vista onwards. Microsoft provided this same capacity to its new generation operating systems after Windows XP. Especially Windows 10, which is the one that practically all of us use today. Updating the motherboard will pose absolutely no problem for this operating system in terms of detecting items such as the network card or the sound card. In its repositories, the system will look for a generic driver to reinstall it and that everything works well. It is not 100% effective, and sometimes installing a device must be done manually.

But of course, perhaps many of you have thought: I have Windows installed with its original license key, what will happen now that I change my hardware? and this is precisely the reason why to make this article, let's see what can happen.

Windows activated: license types and differences

On Windows systems, there are three types of licenses as methods to legally activate the product: OEM, Retail, and Volume licenses.

• Case of Retail or Volume licenses: this type of license is acquired by the user himself, by purchasing a key online or one that is available on the program's installation CD. This means that we can enter it as many times as we want in our system to have it activated again, as long as we identify ourselves as the legitimate user of that key. Case of OEM licenses: as you can imagine, this type of license is supplied directly by the manufacturer of the equipment, which means that they are associated with certain hardware and equipment. In simple terms, it is a key that is stored in the BIOS of the motherboard, so if we change this, in principle we are going to lose the key. And we say, only in principle.

Know what kind of key we have

With the previous description we can already imagine more or less what key we have, but it will be interesting for users who have doubts to know how to differentiate between one and the other.

We are going to enter the Windows properties, so we will go to " My Computer " and by right-clicking on the icon we will choose " Properties ". If we are weaker than all this, we will press the key combination " Windows + Pause / Break"

We already have the window open, now we will go to the end and we will see the " Windows Activation " section. If the id. The product we see is made up only of numbers and letters, so it is a Retail or Volume key. But if we see in the second term the distinctive "OEM" then it is a manufacturer key, of the chungas. Do not worry, there is a way to solve this so as not to lose our password in any case.

By the way, if you do not have Windows activated, then you can proceed to update the motherboard.

Change motherboard without reinstalling Windows in case you don't have it activated

Well, if we have Windows 10 in its latest version and updated, the truth is that we will not have much to do. Just install our new base plate and our hardware and restart the equipment in a normal and current way.

At this point, we will possibly see how Windows 10 does not start instantly, instead a black screen will appear notifying us that Windows is installing the new components. This means that the system has detected the new hardware, and is installing the drivers for this new motherboard, just as if we were in a new installation of Windows, although the system will not have erased absolutely nothing.

At this point, we must comment on two recommendations that we could carry out:

Uninstall previous drivers

If we are aware of what will change when we install the new motherboard, it will be interesting to go to the list of installed programs and eliminate those that we no longer need. For example, the driver for the sound card, the driver for the network card, the chipset driver if we have it, and possible motherboard programs that manufacturers give us as an extra such as AIsuite, Dragon Center, etc.

If we need to change the AHCI mode (previous versions of Windows)

This can be useful when updating a computer that is working in IDE mode to one that is working in AHCI mode, which is the one that uses the SATA interface. In Windows 10 we will have no need to do this.

We open the registry editor by typing “ regedit ” on the execute tool, previously opened with “ Windows + R ”.

Now we look for the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ services \ msahci

Inside, we are going to open with the right button the subkey "Start" and change its value to "0"

Now we will go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ services \ pciide

And we will do the same with the subkey "Start", changing it to "0".

We can now close Windows, install our new motherboard, and start the system again. We should have no problem detecting new components or detecting disk drives under the AHCI protocol.

Make sure the Windows disk starts correctly

As always, the hard drive with the operating system installed will be the one with the bootloader installed inside it. What we will have to do so that the motherboard does not have doubts that it is that hard drive, is to uninstall removable storage devices and other data hard drives that we have.

In this way the UEFI BIOS will automatically detect the only available hard disk and normally start the operating system. It is possible that we get some inaccessible boot device or similar errors so check out these tutorials:

Change motherboard without reinstalling licensed Windows

But undoubtedly the section of greatest interest to many will be this. What to do when we have Windows activated and we don't want to lose the OEM key? Well what we are going to do, and watch out, this is for all kinds of keys, is to link Windows 10 key to a Microsoft account.

From the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, namely build 1607 onwards, it is possible to link the Windows license key with an email account that we have at Microsoft, for example, a Hotmail. In this way, Windows will be activated again, even if we change hardware, only registering in the system as a user of that Microsoft account (not as an offline user).

Link Windows 10 key to a Microsoft account

To do this, we are going to go to the configuration panel, which is opened by the cogwheel in the start menu. Once inside, we will click on the “ Update and Security ” option. Finally we will go to the " Activation " section.

In the area on the right we will have to click on the option " Add an account " (we already have it added, so that option does not appear). Note that if we already had it associated, the message " Windows is activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account " would appear.

Now a process would open in which we would access our Microsoft account and the key would finally be associated with our user.

In this way, we will proceed as we would when Windows is not activated. We change our board, we reinstall all the hardware including the hard drive with the system and everything should start without any problem.

Now our system will be deactivated because we have removed the motherboard that had the key in the BIOS. So what we will do is go back to Update and security