I'd had the new MOBO, CPU and RAM kicking around for a (long) while, so finally decided to take the plunge.  I was hoping that I'd be able to sysprep the system image, but unfortunately was not able to as it had, apparently, been 'upgraded'.  Quite what this means in M$ parlance I'm not entirely sure; it could mean that I'd cloned the system from a platter HDD to the current SSD, or maybe even that I'd installed SP1 on top of W7 - who knows?!  I'm mentioning this as using sysprep is the only method I'd suggest using to try to preserve the existing OS and software installation when upgrading a significant chunk of a computer's hardware such as I was doing.  It's either that, or bite the bullet, wipe the system drive and reinstall everything.  There are some youtube videos out there which suggest that you can 'simply' uninstall all the motherboard drivers, swap the hardware over and then reboot, but I honestly don't think you'd get very far with that approach.  You're more likely to end up sitting in front of a completely unresponsive system long before you've managed to uninstall everything pertaining to the old hardware.

If you're thinking of upgrading your computer's hardware and would like to give the sysprep route a go, then there are plenty of guides on the internet for how to use this utility, e.g. http://www.makeuseof.com/...nging-the-motherboard/

As mentioned, sysprep was not available to me so I had to reinstall windows from scratch on the SSD.  Initially, it was not even selectable in the BIOS as a boot drive, and the OS install was failing at the first restart point.  I then removed all other hard drives and started again with just the SSD plugged in; this time it was selectable as a boot device in the BIOS.  I then had to fight the Windows installer a bit more; it initially said that it couldn't install to the drive as it had an MBR partition table and needed to be installed to GPT.  After sorting that out, Windows then told me that it couldn't install to a GPT partitioned drive.  Go figure :-D  In the end, what got it working was just to use the Windows installer to delete all partition information from the drive and create a new one; at this point you should see a 100MB reserved partition and the rest of the drive as another partition that Windows will install to.  This is certainly true of Windows 7, I'm not sure about 8, 8.1 or 10.

I had one more hard drive issue after installing Windows which is that one of the platter drives was not showing up under Windows, but the drive was listed in the BIOS.  If this is the case if/when you upgrade, the drive might be marked as 'foreign' (which I think means the previous Windows installation saw it as having some system-related files on it).  Any drives like this can be imported quite simply using the Windows drive manager.

Fortunately, all my large data stores (for example, the Spectrasonics STEAM folder) and installer files lived on the other non-system drives (as well as being backed-up on my NAS box) so once I'd got the system up and running it was mainly a question of running all the application installers.  There were a few corrupted files which I had to fetch from the internet and the XLN software (always) has to be installed from the web as far as I know.

It still took me about three days to install, (re-)register and configure everything.  I dread to think how long it would have taken me if I hadn't had the data and installers readily available.  Time well spent though I think; the new MOBO had the required 2x PCI slots so I can continue to use my Creamware Pulsar cards and now I have a current gen i7 CPU and 32GB of RAM to play with.

Hopefully some of the above will be of use to people contemplating upgrading the computer hardware.  If you have any questions or would like anything clarified, please ask.

I recently built a new system (went from an ASRock Z77 motherboard system to an ASUS Z170 motherboard system).  Everything was new except the SSD for OS and Sonar and the optical drives.  I didn't do a new install of Win 10.  As I reused the OS SSD, I just booted it up and Win 10 automatically installed the needed drivers for the new motherboard.  I didn't have to manually install any drivers.  As I already had the "digital entitlement" for Win 10, it automatically activated when I logged in. 
 
I did have to reauthorize one of my plug ins (don't remember which one) but that was the only recording related issue.  That actually allowed me to clean up that authorization since I had both Win 7 and Win 10 (dual boot) on the old system and only Win 10 on the new system.

I had a similar experience as the OP, ston, did a few years ago, attempting to "sysprep" my Windows 7 Pro SP-1 system for a hardware upgrade from a 10 year old cpu & mobo.  I was upgrading to a new Asus mobo with a 3rd gen Intel Core cpu.
 
I ended up wasting a couple of days, with sysprep failing at the end, and Win 7 needing a clean install on the new hardware.  I think it was because I had originally installed from a Win 7 Pro OEM disk without SP-1, and had "upgraded" to SP-1.
 
The good news about Windows 10 that I have heard, is that it has a newer way of "abstracting" the hardware, so that it is resilient to major hardware changes.  It won't freak out if newer mobo hardware is detected, it will automatically detect the drivers that it needs.  That should make future PC upgrades a breeze

Interesting stuff re: W10 and upgrading hardware, thanks.  Although my laptops have both been upgraded to W10, I'm sticking to my W7 guns for my main DAW machine.  There's still some stuff about 10 that get on my nerves a bit - candy bloody crush saga appearing in the start menu for one ;-)

ston
Interesting stuff re: W10 and upgrading hardware, thanks.  Although my laptops have both been upgraded to W10, I'm sticking to my W7 guns for my main DAW machine.  There's still some stuff about 10 that get on my nerves a bit - candy bloody crush saga appearing in the start menu for one ;-)

I understand sticking to Win 7.  I still have one running.
 
Check out these Win 10 tips.  Worked for me!  No more candy crush!
 
http://www.howtogeek.com/269331/how-to-disable-all-of-windows-10s-built-in-advertising/
 
http://www.howtogeek.com/249254/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-using-so-much-data/
 
http://www.howtogeek.com/241752/how-to-stop-windows-10-apps-from-running-in-the-background/
 
http://www.howtogeek.com/221864/digging-into-and-understanding-windows-10s-privacy-settings/

The first link "How to disable all of winds 10s built in advertising" is not applicable to my Win 10 Pro installation (what the link shows is not in my installation).  As the first one is invalid, I didn't look at any others.   But, my system is fine as I have it customized.  Latency Mon shows my system "can handle audio" and there is nothing in red.

fireberd
The first link "How to disable all of winds 10s built in advertising" is not applicable to my Win 10 Pro installation (what the link shows is not in my installation).  As the first one is invalid, I didn't look at any others.   But, my system is fine as I have it customized.  Latency Mon shows my system "can handle audio" and there is nothing in red.

I was replying to the OP's remark that he was annoyed by the Candy Crush appearing on his Win 10 Start Menu.
 

ston
 
There's still some stuff about 10 that get on my nerves a bit - candy bloody crush saga appearing in the start menu for one ;-)

 
Posting that the link is invalid is incorrect.  That could be mistaken to mean that the link is broken.  It is not.
 
If you don't have that problem, great!  But some others may find that info useful!

Well, I've already removed some of the more egregious coloured boxes which live under the W10 start menu, but now it's full of rather ugly square 'holes' which seem to have no context menu by which I could fill them with more useful things.  This kind of nonsense is what happens when you have a UI designed for touch applied to a machine which is designed to be used with a k/b and mouse.  I think that I might just install the W7 style start menu on them and be done with it :-)

ston
Well, I've already removed some of the more egregious coloured boxes which live under the W10 start menu, but now it's full of rather ugly square 'holes' which seem to have no context menu by which I could fill them with more useful things.  This kind of nonsense is what happens when you have a UI designed for touch applied to a machine which is designed to be used with a k/b and mouse.  I think that I might just install the W7 style start menu on them and be done with it :-)

To add your own tiles, just drag an app that you want to see from the main menu "All Apps" and drop where you like.
 
Simple!
 
The context menu only seems to appear after a tile is present.  And you can resize the large area with the tiles by dragging the edge.

fireberd
I recently built a new system (went from an ASRock Z77 motherboard system to an ASUS Z170 motherboard system).  Everything was new except the SSD for OS and Sonar and the optical drives.  I didn't do a new install of Win 10.  As I reused the OS SSD, I just booted it up and Win 10 automatically installed the needed drivers for the new motherboard.  I didn't have to manually install any drivers.  As I already had the "digital entitlement" for Win 10, it automatically activated when I logged in. 
 
I did have to reauthorize one of my plug ins (don't remember which one) but that was the only recording related issue.  That actually allowed me to clean up that authorization since I had both Win 7 and Win 10 (dual boot) on the old system and only Win 10 on the new system.

I have a used i7 cpu and motherboard I acquired and would like to think I could do this as well. I may give it a go in a few weeks. Thanks