IMAGING AN EXISTING SYSTEM

The alternative goes like this: Install Windows 10 as usual on a sacrificial machine (or a sacrificial drive), making sure everything stays on your C: drive. Configure it using the standard tools. Set up your favorite user accounts, your visual settings, install your software, and disable whatever you want disabled. Then turn it into something you can move elsewhere.

There are a few ways to do this, but creating an ISO isn’t the most sensible. Nor is wrestling with DISM at the command prompt of a Windows installer, or creating some kind of Windows PE boot media. You’d be better off running something like Macrium Reflect or EaseUs ToDo Backup, both of which include bootable backup environments, and exporting the contents of your hard drive to a system image on an external disk. On your target machine, just restore that disk image, reactivate it with a new key, and you’re good to go.

Frankly, while this is possible and feasible if you’re using the same hardware on both machines (or just want to roll back the same machine to its original settings), it’s less practical for these purposes than preconfiguring and preloading a Windows 10 ISO. Porting an existing install, particularly one that’s already been activated with a product key, to a machine with differing hardware can cause problems, and might even mean a sheepish call to Microsoft’s beleaguered activation representatives if your OS decides you’re up to no good. Making regular backups is A Good Thing, and you should totally do that, but leave system imaging to those poor IT departments with fleets of identical hardware to maintain.