I have a laptop running Win 8 (laptop came pre installed with Win 8), I have an SSD that I was using for something else but now is not being used so I'd like to swap this into the laptop and use my Win 8 license - is this possible ? Initially I was hoping it would be as simple as backing up my original HD to a system image, then swapping the drives and restoring this image to the SSD, but it seems that this may lead to issues down the line with registry etc , I was then planning to do a fresh install on the SSD and transfer the license over using slmgr.vbs -upk to take it away from the old HD and enter it onto the new one - can anyone confirm will this work before I swapping out drives? If this is possible what would be the best way to install it fresh (legitimately) - download a trial and enter the license key from the old HD ? Thanks
it works fine. I just did this for my parents a few months ago, moved them from a HDD to an SSD. if win 8 is preinstalled then the key should transfer from the bios. i recommend clean install from iso to the SSD (make sure you have your Win 8 key from magic jelly bean first just in case). there are multiple ways to get a win 8 iso, how you do that is up to you. but once you have it, it's easy. I also bought a cheap new dell laptop a few weeks ago and did a clean install on that too using the same HDD though. I never typed a serial, it autopopulated from bios and was automatically activated. So I've done this twice in the last 2 months or so with zero problems
I've had to reactivate once when swapping a harddrive, but it was a simple call to Microsoft's 800 number and enter a bunch of numbers and get feedback on the new activation code, takes like 5 minutes on average.
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