Yesterday evening, April 6, 2025, I replaced what has for many years been my secondary PC with the former primary PC that should have replaced it a year ago upon buying a new case to house its innards. The replacement has been assembled for some time, needing only testing to iron out potential SNAFUs.
What spurred me to finally take the plunge? The assembled replacement was temporarily placed atop the desk where my secondary PC's monitor, keyboard and mouse reside, a precaution against potential flooding due to our now-ended stretch of catastrophic weather. The threat ended, I was about to move the replacement back to a corner of the computer room floor. It then came to me that, atop the desk, I could easily switch all needed connections from the old secondary PC to its replacement. This was done.
There were indeed several SNAFUs. Not only did the replacement not boot into Windows, it couldn't reach the BIOS, with an ERROR CODE the motherboard manual doesn't explain. I removed the case front panel, reversed the polarity of one front panel connector, and ensured all memory modules were secure in their sockets. BINGO! I reached the BIOS, where I needed to re-designate my BOOT DRIVE. I also reset the memory to run in DUAL CHANNEL mode. That's all it took. The computer boots into Windows without issue.
By then, it was a little past my normal bedtime. I shut down both PCs and retired for the day.
First thing this morning, I fired up the new secondary PC, transferred an ancient game my brother plays every time he visits (with configuration and saves intact), and began the slow process of updating Windows and other "critical" programs.
My next project is to reconnect and fire up my fourth

computer long enough to officially remove its Win10 registration key. Why? It’s a "legit" Win10 key that I paid full price for. I want to use that key on my current primary PC, which has lacked a “legit” key since needing to rebuild its OS due to an unrecoverable partition error. Once done, I'll junk the fourth PC, there being nothing inside (or outside) worth saving.