
What happens behind the scenes is significantly more complex.Įvery machine is different from every other machine, and during installation, those differences are accounted for. Then setup goes to work, showing a progress bar or some propaganda information about the benefits of the operating system you’re installing, and how wonderful your life together will be. When you install an operating system, the setup program goes through what appears to be the same sequence on every machine: you enter the product key, type in a little information, tell it what machine name you want, set the time zone, and pick a password.

Windows configures itself for your machine Restoring a complete image backup to different hardware isn’t on the list.

They are unlikely to work - or work reliably - if restored to different hardware. They contain a copy of Windows that is highly customized and configured for that specific hardware. Image backups are a safety net for software and hardware failures on the computer they back up.

Restoring an image backup from one computer to another
