Transferring existing programmes to new laptop

mikephillips · 14 Aug 2020

Apologies if this has been covered before, but search only popped up one other close thread:

Situation: Ageing W7Pro OEM laptop upgraded to W10Pro 2004 (now slowing badly with age, like me) - wish to buy new sparkling toy.
Object: Would like to 'carry' all installed progs to new machine without having to re-install them
Plan: Buy Full retail W10 Pro. Install on new lappie.

Now the questions: There are programmes around which claim to transfer stuff, like 'Easeus PCTrans'. Does it work?

Can I 'do it myself' by:-
a) Cloning Drive and transferring to new OR
b) Copy Registry, Progs folders and Prog data to new (plus tidying up 'Destop and other personalisations) OR
is there more dark secret stuff involved about which I have no idea? I assume I will have driver issues but I hope I can work through those.

dalchina · 14 Aug 2020

Hi, were you to search the forum for e.g.
Easeus Todo PCTrans
or
Laplink PCMover
you would find some recent threads mentioning these.

1 off license fee, easiest option is to use a disk image of the old PC as source.
Last time I did it, there was a cheaper license for that- but that was some years ago.

With hundreds of progs installed, perhaps 96% success- many had licenses transferred too.

Great time saver. Don't try large progs like games, Office, and certainly not security software.
Also migrates accounts and data if you wish.

Full retail W10 Pro

Retail= future-proof - i.e. can move to new MBO/PC.
Do you need Pro? Which Pro features do you really need? Feature updates are no longer 'forced' on people, until end of service life of a build. And there are 3rd party utilties for additional control of updates should that be needed.

a) Cloning Drive and transferring to new OR

- unlikely as you could well face a driver compatibility problem (from PC never designed for Win 10).
more likely to work with PCs both compatible with Win 10.
- you would carry over alll registry detritus if that bothered you
- is your old PC 32 bits or 64? A key question when considering both migration and cloning.

b) Copy Registry, Progs folders and Prog data to new (plus tidying up 'Destop and other personalisations) OR
is there more dark secret stuff involved about which I have no idea? I assume I will have driver issues but I hope I can work through those.

No chance.

mikephillips · 14 Aug 2020

dalchina - very helpful! Thanks for the search tip too.

64 bit on old and new. I always 'assumed' Pro was best to have?

My ignorance prompts a question - cloning/imaging - if cloning would be a problem, what is different between cloning and disk imaging?

It is looking like Easeus I think.

dalchina · 14 Aug 2020

Strictly a clone is an exact single copy. However it has morphed into including copies which have partitions modified in size as well.

Disk imaging is a sequence of related image files representing the used parts only of the partitions imaged, compressed.
Base image + a set of differential images
Base image + a sequence of incremental images
are the two basic patterns.

Disk imaging can save you if your disk fails (new disk), from ransomware, unbootable cases and also acts as a complete backup from which you can extract files.

Thus you have good chance of recovering from many difficult situations without help.

Simply use Google to discover more. Very strongly and tirelessly recommended here.

If you don't want to use bitlocker or group policy, then why spend extra on Pro? Have a look at the features and decide - there are more differences, but the ones I've made use of to control updates are now less relevant then they were.

mikephillips · 14 Aug 2020

Thanks - now to choose my new Laptop!

Mark Phelps · 14 Aug 2020

BOTH of the migration apps that @dalchina mentioned work -- I know because I have used both of them.

But what neither does well is migrate apps from one OS version to a much newer OS version. In some cases, the older Win7-era apps are simply NOT going to work in Win10.

If it were mine, I would start by making a list of the current Win7 apps, including their version numbers, and then check with the vendor of each app to see if (1) that version still works under Win10, and (2) if they have a new updated version and if so, what that costs to get the new version. If the Win7 version still works under Win10, then you should have the option of keeping that or upgrading to a newer version. IF it does not work, you would probably have to BUY the new version.

Additionally, some apps simply will NOT migrate -- you will need to check the details of each migration product to see which apps will be excluded from the migration.

mikephillips · 14 Aug 2020

"BOTH of the migration apps that @dalchina mentioned work" - useful, thanks.

To recap, I only want to transfer what is working on a W10 machine to a W10 machine.