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Hey guys,
My PC croaked on me what has been 3 years ago now. I tried moving my hard drive to a different computer and that's when I discovered Windows 10 is very particular about what computer it's on with the licensing. Gone are the days apparently of just moving a hard drive to a new machine and going. So I gave up on that. Put the other hard drive back in PC #2. Since then both computers have just been stored. I finally found some free time recently and decided to fiddle with both computers. Since this time, I had gotten a newer computer, PC #3, but really was wanting to expand my storage in it which made me think of these other two computers. I managed to revive my original computer, however, the machine seems to recognize the hard drive yet it doesn't take it as a bootable drive. One step I intend to take is putting it into PC #2 as a secondary drive just to see what I can see on it. Essentially I'd like to see what is on it, see if there's anything that I need to backup still or copy over to my newest PC #3 before formatting the drive and using it as a secondary on PC #3.
Lost yet? Hopefully not. What I want to know is what my options are. Is there a way for me to at least boot my old PC up to the command line so I can browse the hard drive since it won't boot directly? Old PC seems flaky still. I was running diagnostics on it, moved the computer a foot and it restarted on me. Not sure where the flaky connection is but definitely something there. So I'm going between formatting the drive, once I know what is on it still, and using it as a secondary on PC #3, or keeping the drive as is and using it on PC #2 instead since the drive is larger than what is there. Honestly I don't know if PC #3 could even handle a secondary because of a power supply that isn't overly impressive, thus keeping PC #2 in mind as an alternate.
If I were to revive it under PC #2, what do I need to do, if anything can be done at all, to get Windows to cooperate with a new system? I've seen talk about deactivating on the old computer first but if I can't get it to respond on that computer....
I don't know. Thus I'm here to get some opinions of what can possibly be done. Annoying that a Windows key is limited to the machine it's installed on. Please fire away with any questions you have! Hope to get a better feel for where I go from here. Thanks guys!
My PC croaked on me what has been 3 years ago now. I tried moving my hard drive to a different computer and that's when I discovered Windows 10 is very particular about what computer it's on with the licensing. Gone are the days apparently of just moving a hard drive to a new machine and going. So I gave up on that. Put the other hard drive back in PC #2. Since then both computers have just been stored. I finally found some free time recently and decided to fiddle with both computers. Since this time, I had gotten a newer computer, PC #3, but really was wanting to expand my storage in it which made me think of these other two computers. I managed to revive my original computer, however, the machine seems to recognize the hard drive yet it doesn't take it as a bootable drive. One step I intend to take is putting it into PC #2 as a secondary drive just to see what I can see on it. Essentially I'd like to see what is on it, see if there's anything that I need to backup still or copy over to my newest PC #3 before formatting the drive and using it as a secondary on PC #3.
Lost yet? Hopefully not. What I want to know is what my options are. Is there a way for me to at least boot my old PC up to the command line so I can browse the hard drive since it won't boot directly? Old PC seems flaky still. I was running diagnostics on it, moved the computer a foot and it restarted on me. Not sure where the flaky connection is but definitely something there. So I'm going between formatting the drive, once I know what is on it still, and using it as a secondary on PC #3, or keeping the drive as is and using it on PC #2 instead since the drive is larger than what is there. Honestly I don't know if PC #3 could even handle a secondary because of a power supply that isn't overly impressive, thus keeping PC #2 in mind as an alternate.
If I were to revive it under PC #2, what do I need to do, if anything can be done at all, to get Windows to cooperate with a new system? I've seen talk about deactivating on the old computer first but if I can't get it to respond on that computer....
I don't know. Thus I'm here to get some opinions of what can possibly be done. Annoying that a Windows key is limited to the machine it's installed on. Please fire away with any questions you have! Hope to get a better feel for where I go from here. Thanks guys!
