Currently have win 10 Pro RETAIL installed on existing PC. Current M/B not compatible with WIN 11. Plan to change to WIN 11 compatible MB, and new C Drive. Is there a way to install WIN 11Pro w/o reinstalling my RETAIL WIN 10 first?
Short answer...
1. Make a backup of your current Windows 10 install.
2. Replace motherboard, CPU, RAM and C:\ drive.
3. Restore the backup you made earlier, to the new C:\ drive, activate Windows and do any updates.
4. Do an In-Place Upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11.
In-Place Upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11...
This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...
www.elevenforum.com
Here is the short version of the In-place upgrade tutorial...
DISABLE non-Microsoft:
a) antivirus software
b) firewall software
c) drive encryption software
Make a full OS backup with a program like Macrium Reflect (free)
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free
Get the Windows 11 ISO image and save it to your desktop...
This tutorial will show you how to download an official Windows Server or Windows 11 64-bit or ARM64 ISO file from Microsoft. Microsoft provides ISO files for Windows Server and Windows 11 to download. You can use these ISO files to clean install or in-place upgrade Windows 11. The Flight Hub...
www.elevenforum.com
Right click the ISO image and choose:
MOUNT
Open File Explorer and you will see a new drive letter. It will "look" like a DVD optical drive.
Double click the new drive letter to open it.
Find
setup.exe and double click it to start the in-place upgrade.
Choose the
Keep personal files and apps option.
After it's all done... to UNmount the ISO image, right click the new drive letter and choose:
EJECT.
The ONLY thing you will lose is some of your personalizations.
Your drivers, programs and data will be intact.
