Update from old laptop to new

My wife is getting a new Lenovo Ideapad 3 in about a weeks time. It has Win 10 (likely Home) installed. Her present laptop is an older Toshiba that also has Win 10 Home installed.

To keep her happy, I will need to make her new laptop look and work like the old one!

- Her documents are stored on Dropbox, so I presume I need to install Dropbox and those will then be available.
- Her emails are on Thunderbird. She has a Gmail account that uses IMAP. I presume I need to install T-Bird and set up account. Hopefully it will then update her folders?
- She has a Microsoft account, but doesn't use it for anything.
- Some files and photos are likely stored on laptop. Probably just copy those over?
- Some programs & games I will have to re-install. (She plays Bridge & Scrabble on-line)
- Printer drivers? Old HP Deskjet - do I just plug into usb ports and then the drivers get installed?
- Same for Mouse & external keyboard she likes.

How about Desktop layout and any other settings. Do I just copy her user file over? Or is there a utility like we used to have on Vista and Win 7 to do the transfer?

Sorry for the jumbled post. Just trying to make a plan. I am sure many have to do this when they get a new computer. Just been a while for us. If this is covered here, please show me where (I have looked!)

Thanks

PS: I don't have the new windows 10 version number yet and I still need to get the one of her laptop.

One tip:

If she has a lot of emails in Thunderbird, I suggest doing the following:

First, make sure that Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives is turned on the the View tab of the File Explorer Options control panel.

Copy C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles (Substitute her username for <user>).

Install Thunderbird on the new machine.

Copy the contents of the two folders in Profiles into their matching folders in the new Thunderbird installation. Don't copy the folders, just their contents. (Thunderbird creates two folder in Profile with what appear to be random names. You can't replace the folders with the old ones, but you can replace their contents. If you get any messages about duplicate files, choose to overwrite.)

When you launch Thunderbird, you should have the accounts, files, and contacts from the old machine. I don't know about filters.

I find that convenient, because I have over 12GB of stuff in Profiles. You could just install Thunderbird and set up the accounts again. An Imap account would update in time. If she has any where near as much stuff in email as I do, that would be a long time, regardless of the speed of your Internet connection. I use Gmail, and their servers apparently won't produce data at high rates.

So....why not take an image of Windows 10 from the old laptop and install it on the new laptop?

I wonder why nearly no one ever suggest to use the USMT ?

Install all needed applications, then use the User State Migration Tool (USMT) for windows 10,

It's not the easiest to use, but once you get it... You will not lose a single setting.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win.../usmt-overview

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...migration-tool

NavyLCDR said:

So....why not take an image of Windows 10 from the old laptop and install it on the new laptop?

I am a bit wary of doing that. Her Toshiba was mine and has been updated through several windows versions and is at least 14 yrs old. It uses AMD processor. Definitely a Legacy unit! I had a lot of problems getting it working when first installing Win10 in about 2018. It has worked fine since then.

Using the already installed new fresh W10 install seems like a better place to start and eventually use to update to Win11.

I found this site on-line. Does using File History seem like a reasonable approach?

How to Transfer Your Files to Windows 10 - dummies

I don't think she has that much in way of emails stored, so should not have a big problem with T-Bird.

- - - Updated - - -

dalchina said:

Alternatively you would
- remove any trialware from the new PC, or clean install Win 10
- use a program such as Laplink PCMover or Easeus Todo PCTrans to migrate user profile and installed programs (one-off license fee). The best way to do that is to use a disk image of the old PC as source on a disk connected to the new PC.
Either way you would need to create a disk image of the old PC.

Is PCMover able to find and move the files from a disk image?

Yesterday wife got her new Lenovo IdeaPad L3 15ITL6. What I found out during initial startup, was that Lenovo had what they call Lenovo Migration Assistant. This it seems in is in partnership with Dropbox. I just ran this utility, chose what we wanted transferred and it got it done. This was using wifi with both computers logged into the same network. The old computer wasn't a Lenovo. Got everything transferred in about 30min. Then installed a few applications and she was on-line!

I could have done this just with Dropbox, I guess. But she only had 2Gb of Dropbox storage and I thought that might not have worked. I see that they do offer 30GB free for 30 days, so I suppose that would have been another way to go.

Lenovo Link: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht509248-lenovo-migration-assistant-lma-helps-moves-files-and-ease-the-setup-of-your-new-pc

Dropbox Link: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/third-party/move-files-to-new-computer

By the way, the new Lenovo had a free upgrade to Windows 11. Not having any experience with Win11, I opted to stay with Win 10 for now. My Lenovo Thinkpad T520 doesn't qualify for the update, it seems.