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To clarify, I have a machine which I generally use Linux on; but I develop for multiple platforms and will eventually need to test on Windows 10/11. This is an amazing machine but installation of Windows can take a while, as I recall, and I would prefer to either be programming on it, watching something on Netflix, or processing/analyzing with it if I have the option.

I have an older, but not old, machine on my right, which has six open drive bays. I know that registration of Windows is keyed to the hardware profile, so I'm wondering; can I install Windows on a hard drive while it's in that machine, remove it, install the drive in this one, and then simply activate it on the final machine? Will that work, or am I missing something and it will care what hardware it was installed on, too?

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  • Why not use a virtual machine?
    – Daniel B
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 20:14
  • I do use a virtual machine! However, VMs generally have indirect access to graphics cards, which is very relevant to the work I do. So, I like to have a standalone instance available, all the same.
    – Michael Macha
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 20:38
  • You can use Windows 10 indefinitely with minimal restrictions (essentially some minor annoyances regarding customization). There is no real need to activate it.
    – Anaksunaman
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 22:15
  • "Can I install Windows on a hard drive while it's in that machine, remove it, install the drive in this one, and then simply activate it on the final machine?" - It might but it likely won't. You will probably get drivers issues out of the box. It shouldn't take more than 20 minutes to install Windows.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 2:02
  • @Ramhound I used to install Windows 8, later W10, for a living, along with computer repair, in my last job. I could generally have it done in ten minutes. It's not so much the time, but the lead-in and lead-out, that bothers me--with Mint, you can go weeks without a restart. However, I'll need to shut down every multimedia, software, and web app I'm using, and remember, half an hour later, how to boot them all back. It's a real problem. So, I'm putting my old machine to use. We'll see if I have driver issues and how much of a problem they are to fix, though.
    – Michael Macha
    Commented Jan 5, 2022 at 2:31

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Windows is in fact tied to hardware, so if you are asking if you can install Windows 10 on one computer, pull the drive and have it be seen as a licensed copy on the other machine, the basic answer is "no." (You can change the license to a valid one at this point though.)

If, however, you are asking "can I install to a drive, move that drive to another machine, and then activate/license windows 10 on the new hardware" then the answer is "yes."

You can add a clean drive as a secondary drive; mount an ISO/image of windows-10 setup disc along with the dism tool (and diskpart etc) to setup an "out of box experience" Windows 10 install on that secondary drive; make it bootable; then drop it into a new computer. You can then add a valid retail license after/during the OOBE first boot.

You can then image the drive itself and use that as a snapshot image to revert to a vanilla system.

The dism part looks something like this:

--mount the ISO file with drive letter {ISO}
-- {NEW_OS} refers to drive letter of the secondary drive we are installing windows to.

--find appropriate OS image index on the ISO. This will be the OS version you want ( {INDEX#} ) :
dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:{ISO}:\sources\install.wim

--identify desired index and use for the following command (installs the OS to new disk):
dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:{ISO}:\sources\install.wim /Index:{INDEX#} /ApplyDir:{NEW_OS}:\

Note the index is the license level that matches your license (e.g. home/pro) so you need to query that. The partitioning and bootable part varies (i.e GPT or not GPT).

There are many walk-throughs of this process, and the diskpart commands are "dangerous enough" for me to not ad-lib. Maybe search for "dism install windows-10 apply-image".

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