Transferring Windows 10 from old laptop to new

My situation is that I'm getting a new laptop, and have opted to get the new laptop without an OS installed, but with windows 10 drivers included.

My current laptop that I'm replacing had windows 8 professional installed on it through download from when I was a student and my university provided windows 8 pro for free to students. Later on, I opted in to the free windows 10 professional upgrade, which is what I'm currently using. I want to get windows 10 onto my new laptop without having to pay for a new license. Something to note is that I don't have optical drives on either laptop.

Suggestions very much appreciated.

 

I don't think you will be able to do that, especially after the Win 10 upgrade, unless the Win 8 Pro provided by your university was the full BOX version, not just OEM or a download.

 

What does that even mean? How can you have drivers when there's no OS?

As far as no optical drive, use this tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

ahh too bad, I'll try to see if the university software page has some kinda of "past downloads" thing where I can grab it again, and then upgrade

I didn't say they were installed, I said they were included, and the reason they're included is so that you can load them up after you install your OS.

 

Included on what? A thumb drive?

Or, do you mean available for download?


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M$ - OS is tied to 1st system its activated on, the only exception I know of is having a full retail edition, this license can be transferred to new PC, why they cost a lot more.

Cheers
3Fees

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So I was hesitant to believe that your OS is tied to the 1st system its activate on... the only way I can think of that would be possible is if it were tied to specific hardware ID's, and if that were the case, you wouldn't be able to replace that hardware in the event of a failure without having to buy a new key. Glad I trusted my instincts and didn't buy an OS with the new laptop, because transferring the OS license over was easy. But I do appreciate the input from you guys. Just posting the result here in case other people are wondering how to do this, not to tell you guys that you're wrong.

So what I did was just went to microsofts website and download windows 8.1 installation media, since my original OS key before upgrading to windows 10 was windows 8.1. I installed 8.1 on the new laptop using the installation media (USB stick) and my original key, and then upgraded to windows 10 (free, again). Out of interest, I used Bellarc advisor to look at the windows 10 key that existed on each machine, and it was different from the 8.1 key but it was the same across both machines. (To clarify, both 8.1 keys were the same, and the resulting windows 10 keys were the same, but different from the 8.1 key). That leads me to believe I could have just created windows 10 installation media and used my windows 10 key from the old machine. Either way, I wiped the old laptop after saving all my files and ensuring the new laptop OS was set up properly, since I don't think you can have the same key running on two machines for very long. All seems to be well, system viewer reports my windows version is genuine, validated, and activated.

 

My university did also provide retail keys.

You could have installed W10 directly and used the W8 key: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/wi...se-windows-7-8-or-8-1-product-key-to-activate

For those activated Windows but no key, COA for instance, there's also gatherosstate.exe, VERY useful!: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/directly-clean-install-windows-10-without-upgrading