Restoring Win 8.1 image from one PC to another (different)

mingle

New Member
Messages
6
Hi guys,

After clinging on XP for almost 12 years, I took the leap to Windows 8 and have actually found it fairly painless, once the 8.1 upgrade allowed me to 'hide' the metro front-end. :)

Anyway, onto the meat of my first post - not so much of an problem, as a question.

I have two desktop PCs, both of which are 5-7 year old Intel Core 2 Duo-based with 2-4GB of RAM.

I performed a clean install of Win 8.1 Pro onto the first partition on a freshly cleaned disk and all went well. Booted up and ran MS Update to get the whole system up to date. Then installed all of my apps. Then I used Acronis TrueImage to create an image backup of the Windows/App partition.

Then rather than going through the entire process on my second PC, I simply partitioned the drive in an identical manner to the first PC then restored the image backup from the other PC onto the second system. Then I rebooted the system and it came up without any issues. I ran MS Update and it downloaded and installed a couple of drivers (GFX, audio, etc) since the second system was slightly different hardware-wise. The only thing I changed on the second system was to give the PC a different name and also change the default user account name, to avoid networking conflicts.

That was a couple of weeks ago. I've been running both systems (seemingly) without any problems. I have two Win 8 licenses, but only used the first. I haven't been nagged or warned about the same licensing key when running essentially the same system on two different machines.

Aside from the obviously licensing issue, are there likely to be any other problems that may crop up?

Cheers,

Mike.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo Thinkcentre A57/M58
I think to stay legal I would go to Control Panel\System and Security\System and change the license key and use the other key you have purchased. That way you don't have to worry about what might happen
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro MC
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus G75VW / Z97 Pro
    CPU
    Intel Core i7-3610QM / I7-4790K
    Motherboard
    Z97 Pro
    Memory
    16 GB Hyundai HTM315156CFR8C-PB PC3-12800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M (GF114M)
    Sound Card
    VIA 6.0.10.1600
    Screen Resolution
    1080
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 850 Pro 256, Samsung 850 Pro 1TB
    Internet Speed
    30 down 3 up
    Browser
    Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    NIS and Malwarebytes
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