Changing motherboard and processor while keeping the same Windows 10 installation

Here's an account of changing the motherboard and processor to your PC while keeping your Windows 10 installation intact.

My old mobo finally died on me, and I had to get a replacement. The processor I had on it was a second-gen Intel Core i7.

I opted for an AM4 motherboard with a AMD Ryzen 5 series processor.

While waiting for the parts to arrive, I wondered if I needed to install Windows 10 again from scratch. 

Turns out, I didn't. 

As my hard drives were fine, I just installed the new parts, put my old hard drives in, and turned the machine on.

Windows started to a blue screen, with repair options available. "It seems you are having trouble starting Windows" or something like that.

I thought I would need to remove the old Intel processor driver, and do stuff like that, until it works. So I went and booted it to safe mode (here's a guide on how to do that). And voila, I got to login to my PC just like it was before. 

So I started thinking, if the safe mode works so well already, maybe I don't even need to do anything...

And I restarted the PC, logged on normally, and... It just worked.

My PC did install some drivers again, like the wifi card and Nvidia control panel, for some reason. Stuff like that. All of that was happening automatically.

Everything just works.

No Windows 10 reactivation, no new license needed, nothing.

It just works. Great job, Microsoft!!!

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