Best way to upgrade software/data to new computer

Hi all, I hope you can help me....my mom is in need of a new laptop. Her existing laptop, a Dell Precision m6500, is giving up the ghost, I think the system board or video card is bad, it just shuts down with no notice intermittently, even with nothing being done on the computer. (I checked cpu temps etc.). Anyway, it's time to get a new one, my problem is, she has a lot of very old apps, and she has data stored everywhere without any organization, so moving her apps and data to a new computer will be a very labor intensive, error-prone task. I have not done a Windows migration that was not just an upgrade on the same computer since the Windows 7 days, so I am hoping/praying lol that there is some reliable way, third party or otherwise, that I can migrate all her apps and data to a new computer without reinstalling everything one by one. It's worth it for me to spend a little money if Windows 10 doesn't directly support a nice migration to a new computer, ie buying some backup or migration software if it's reliable.

Do you have a recommendation? Thank you in advance for your thoughts!

What windows is she running now?

Thanks for your reply @Samuria, she is running Windows 10 - pretty sure Pro.

You could try making a system image using Macrium Reflect Free on a removable drive then restore that image to the new PC. You will have the wrong drivers but with luck Windows 10 should install the correct drivers required. Download the drivers for the new laptop also since you might need to manually install some of them.

If that doesn't work, you will need to clean install the apps & programs, copy across the user data and configure settings e.g. email.

Steve C said:

You could try making a system image using Macrium Reflect Free on a removable drive then restore that image to the new PC. You will have the wrong drivers but with luck Windows 10 should install the correct drivers required. Download the drivers for the new laptop also since you might need to manually install some of them.

If that doesn't work, you will need to clean install the apps & programs, copy across the user data and configure settings e.g. email.

Hi there

about 99% of time a Macrium restore to new hardware will work - maybe after 2 boot attempts -- OK once booted successfully for first time video will probably be bonkersly wrong and audio won't work --however Windows will update those really quickly and then you should be good to go.

If system does fail to boot - what you can try -- and this normally works every time too is to load Macrium stand alone (bootable rescue media) and then choose fix windows boot problems. Then try and re-boot -- this will almost certainly work OK.

The only other issue you might have to deal with is Windows activation -- you *could be lucky* and it will work OK. If it's a retail copy of Windows that was on your old PC then if activation problems just activate by phone. Otherwise try using serial number from new PC -- if that fails just activate by phone anyway.

If the old system had an OEM Windows you might have to install Windows from new -- however try first if you can get the old system to work as it could save you a lot of work.

Cheers
jimbo

Thank you everyone for your suggestions, I'll post back once I research and attempt to do this migration!

OK, I have done some research on Macrium, and people seem happy that cloning works well. I wanted to see if I understood how to do this, I do have a couple of questions as the partitions I need to worry about is a little bit of an unknown. So --

It appears I have to do this, is this correct?
1. Run Macrium Reflect on old laptop - "Clone" partition(s) to an external USB-connected hard disk I have (call this disk 'X').
2. Connect X to new laptop via USB. On power on, boot from USB so it boots from X. I may have to ensure 'boot from usb' is an option in the bios.
3. Run Macrium Reflect, which is already installed on X which booted.
4. Copy/Drag the previously cloned partition(s) to the new laptop's drive (see question).
5. Unplug X/USB drive, restart computer - should boot from the new destination disk!

Questions:
1. In step 1, which partitions do I need to select? As you can see from the picture below, I have 3 partitions. The first is 'Active'. I am assuming I can just clone the middle/second partition, my C: drive?
2. In step 4, do I replace existing partitions? If I have 1-2-3 partitions cloned (based on 1st question), where do they go in the destination disk on the new computer? For example, do I just need to replace the C: partition on the new laptop with the cloned C: partition?
3. I have read that I might need to use reDeploy to get the drivers right, but I think this is not part of the free Macrium product. Do I need to use reDeploy, or as you have commented above Windows should take care of this?
4. What have I missed in this procedure?

Thank you for your help! (My 94 year old Mom thanks you too!!!!!)

The new laptop will be Win 10 Pro, you are correct, and the picture is of the old computer's disk...