Restoring Win10 backup Image from Dell to other PC

You need all partitions except any dell recover or it wont boot. I dont understand why you have created a new user account as you need to boot from mreflect to run the image you cant clone while windows is running.

If the laptop has win10 why are you trying to restore an image from another pc?

The whole thing may not work as often oem versions are tied to the bios and wont load on another pc and if its running on the old dell it may not activate at all.

Why dont you just get a win10 iso and do a clean install?

Make a Macrium Reflect Rescue drive using the option to do so in Macruim Reflect. Boot the new computer from the Macrium Reflect Rescue drive. Restore the OS partition only from the image right over the top of the OS partition on the new computer. You do probably want to make a backup image of the OS partition from the new computer first anyway, though.

After you copy over the OS partition only, run the Fix Windows boot problems utility from the restore menu of the Macrium Reflect Rescue drive. That's all you have to do. As long as both Windows 10 are the same version (Home or Pro), you won't have any activation issues.

First, the bad news. Your Office 2013 is likely to detect that it has been moved to another computer and deactivate itself. You may be able to re-activate it by calling Microsoft. Have you tried BelArc Advisor to retrieve the product key?
Products: Belarc Advisor

Windows will actually do the same thing, but the license for Windows 10 established for the Lenovo should re-activate the Windows automatically.

Other than that, it sounds like you want a nice, fresh clean install of Windows, except you want all your programs from your other computer. So, this is what I would do:

1. Make a folder on a USB drive for any Lenovo hardware drivers that Windows might not supply. Let's say the USB drive gets drive letter E: and the folder you create for the drivers is Drivers. Connect the hard drive to the Lenovo and in a Command Prompt (Admin) or Powershell (Admin) run:
dism /online /export-driver /destination:E:\Drivers
Adjust the path in red as needed.

2. Do a clean install of Windows by booting from a Windows 10 USB flash drive or DVD, select the Custom Install option and delete all the partitions on the hard drive. Highlight the unallocated space to install to and click Next to let Windows set up all the partitions.

3. After Windows is done setting up and booting from the hard drive and asking you for network info, I believe, then you can reboot the computer from the Macrium Reflect rescue drive and restore only the OS partition (C: drive) over the top of the newly installed OS partition.

4. Yes, you will have to run the Fix Windows booting problems utility from Macrium Reflect.

5. Let Windows update run and install all the new drivers available from Microsoft. Look in Device Manager for any hardware that has an exclamation point or "unknown device". You can manually restore those drivers from your exported drivers folder on the USB drive by just selecting the folder you created and making sure the checkbox for checking subfolders is checked.

The reason you don't want to just restore the whole entire hard drive from the old computer is because we don't know how many extra and unused partitions there are on it. It sounds like you want a brand new start with no extra partitions and that is what the above steps will accomplish.

Be advised that Lenovo computers come with a one button restore option. Clean installing Windows 10 this way be erasing all the existing partitions on the hard drive will break the one button restore function.

KabyBlue said:

@NavyLCDR thnx for taking the time to provide that breakdown. Much appreciated...:)

> Yes I did try BelarcAdvisor (it's one of my favorite apps) and it was only able to display the last few digits of the product key. I figured that if I uninstalled Office 2013 from the old Dell after the clone is complete that it would not be a problem -- I hope.

> That " export-driver " cmd is very interesting. I did some research on it and from my understanding it exports all the third-party drivers (I presume in this case Lenovo). So would I be correct in thinking that this wouldn't be the same as copying all the driver files in the DriverStore\FileRepository folder?

> Ok will definitely use the "Fix Windows Booting" utility before a restart after restore is complete and appreciate the heads up on the loss of the one-button restore ability.

Since 2013, Office keys are encrypted. Key finders do not work.

cereberus said:

Since 2013, Office keys are encrypted. Key finders do not work.

Didn't know that. Thnx