How can I transfer my Windows 10 installation to another device?

So here's a big a question I've been wondering about

I have a desktop PC, a laptop and a tablet with Windows 10 and I want to do a clean install to all of them and because I'm a nerd with physchological issues who wants to install every program with custom configuration and some OS customization from registry tweaks and wants the same across to all devices.

My problem is time.

So I thought can I configure my desktop PC exactly how I want it and then do a disk image copy and transfer it to my laptop and then to my tablet pc?

How Win10 will fare with drivers?

If it is impossible, is there any other simillar way?

Like sync, for example I install Firefox and configure it and it gets installed and configured automatically on my laptop as well.

I am an old goat who started using Windows 95 as his first OS and such things were impossible but times have changed and methods have been developed.

Wish I had a positive answer for you -- but I don't.

I have done much the same for years -- migrating settings, data, and apps -- from one PC to another, back when I could afford to replace my desktop every 2-3 years, and the tool I used then was Alohabob PC Relocator -- which worked great!

But, that was with Windows 7.

Then, when I moved up to Windows 8, and PC Relocator was gone, I switched over to using Laplink PC Mover -- and it worked well, but not great. While it could migrate most stuff, there were items it could not.

Then later, I moved up to Win10 -- and the migration success stories ended! I tried both current versions of PC Mover (i.e., versions 10 and 11), and putting it bluntly, they were both a waste of time! While they migrated stuff I didn't need to migrate, either because I knew how to copy the settings and data, or because reinstalling them was really easy, they did NOT migrate the stuff I needed to migrate, primarily MS Office apps.

I also tried EaseUS PC Transfer, and it worked no better. It was different from PC Mover in how it worked, but no better.

So, hopefully, someone ELSE has experience with a product that DOES WORK in Win10 and will share that here -- and I will be monitoring this thread to see what they suggest.

Bree said:

Windows 10 is surprisingly good at finding the correct drivers when an image is restored to the 'wrong' hardware.

Where you may have problems is with activation. Each PC will have a digital licence stored on Microsoft's activation servers and tied to a unique hardware ID for the PC. This licence is only valid for the edition originally installed and activated on that PC, Home or Pro. If you restore an image of Pro onto a PC with a Home digital licence (or the other way round) it won't activate from the PC's digital licence. You'd have to buy a new licence for that PC to run a different edition on it.

No problem with that.

I took the hard drive from a HP desktop that died and put it in my new HP desktop and it worked without any problem. This was with a retail copy of Windows 10. The new desktop is now a Windows 10 Home (OEM) and Windows 10 Pro (Retail) dual boot system.

Have you tried the Control Panel\System and Security\Backup and Restore (Windows 7) tool to create a system image and restore it on the other devices?

I've just used the SSD plus 4 HDDs with OEM 10 Pro from my dying i7 - 6700k rig and put them in a Ryzen 5 1600 rig I've just assembled, other than having to load the lan drivers from the motherboard driver disk, everything is as it was, activated it with a new Retail key, no install required everything exactly where it was on the old PC. Using an image of one PC on another will normally work if you have the appropriate key and drivers to hand.
Kept the image of the OEM i7 setup in case I can ever track down a replacement motherboard.

I personally use AOMEI backuper to backup and restore my computer. Its very easy to use and reliable. It also has a feature called: "Universal Restore". With this feature, you can restore a backup image, system image in particular, created on one computer to another or new computer that has dissimilar hardware installed. AOMEI backuper is free but unfortunately to use Universal restore you need to have the pro version.

Hi,

It should work using MR Free system image of the host pc then restore to the guests.

Cheers,