Changing mother board... What do I do?

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If it's an identical motherboard, will the hard drive play nice, or will I have to reinstall Windows 10?

I suspect if it's NOT an identical motherboard, the reinstall will absolutely be necessary. Am I right?

Also, will my Windows installation now be invalid, meaning I have to pay for a new license? I've been told that SOMETIMES they'll let you keep your license, as long as the old motherboard isn't being used any more.

Can someone clear some of this up for me?

It will probably play nicely, however it could be end up a license issue since later versions of windows starts profiling the hardware in the system (motherboard, graphics adapter, CPU) and ties the license to that when activating.

Some versions of Windows can be reactivated a couple of times (Windows 7 Home Premium which i've activated a couple of times on different hardware), i do not know about the low budget versions.

If there is any problem, you can probably call Microsoft and tell them about your predicament and ask them how to proceed.

Good luck.

I would guess you will need to re-install Win10, but then the matter of the license should not be a problem as long as you have already connected a Microsoft account with your product key and machine...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... ft-account

Thank you for the replies.

I sort of cheated. I used the restore discs, put Windows 7 on the machine, and then used a home-made DVD created using Microsoft's "Media Creation Tool", and upgraded it AGAIN to Windows 10.

Uh... It worked. Microsoft didn't question it, it shows as activated, and I'm happy. Even had to do it a second time when the old hard drive failed (which I suspected would happen, considering the motherboard had gone dead, and hard drives have circuitry too.) Once again, no problems.

I have no idea why they let me install Windows 10 on a machine with a new mobo, since usually an installation is tied to the board, but I'm not going to complain. The computer works and all's well.

Thanks again for your input.