DIY laptop swap.

JFI.

Bought a s/h motherboard for my broken Yoga S1 (i5 cpu) on Monday.

Swapped it today when it arrived in the post.

I had used the hard drive in something else so I swapped the HD out of a machine running win 10 on a really slow AMD A4.

It booted first time and then installed a few drivers.

Then I reset it in the settings to get a clean machine and it downloaded a new version of windows and installed it, took about an hour including downloading the image.

Then I upgraded from home to pro, which it did free and activated itself.

Then I got it to install the latest version that isn't on automatic roll out ATM.

That took longer, about 2 hrs.

So in summary it appears you can change from AMD to Intel without doing anything special by swapping disks.

Swapping the MB and the disk didn't require manual activation.

YMMV.

Assuming it carries on working its well worth the £90 to fix as its touch screen, wacom digitizer, i5, 8G RAM.

I would have fixed it a couple of years ago but the MB was £400+.

Reply to
dennis
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In message <O3PQE.233544$ snipped-for-privacy@usenetxs.com, "dennis@home" snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

I've found that to be well worth a try in the past.

I took the HD from a failed AMD-based Acer laptop and put it into an Intel based Lenovo X201, expecting to have to do a full install. But it just worked. I then upgraded the x201 from whatever it was running (Vista or W7?) to W10, installed a few different drivers and it all activated.

I remember all this specifically because I had been running a lot of usb diagnostics on the Acer which had revealed problems with the AMD chipset for which AMD subsequently issued a patch.

I passed the X201 on to someone else and they are still happily using it.

It can be a bit of a crapshoot, though.

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Reply to
Bill

I thought W10 was linked to the motherboard. My guess is that the 2nd hand motherboard was previously used with W10 and that is why W10 now works.

Reply to
Michael Chare

I think it is probably linked to the drive BUT if te motherboard has different hardewaree it may have a hiccup on first boot and require you to install new drivers

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I deleted the original copy of W10 on my HP laptop together with various bits or rubbish. I then installed a new copy of W10 which activated without my doing anything in the ways of entering keys etc.

It does now appear that Microsoft do allow you to change the mobo by linking your digital licence key to your Microsoft account.

Reply to
Michael Chare

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