How to move Windows 10 from OLD desktop to NEW laptop

Didn`t the laptop come with W10 installed ?

I am fully prepared to get quite a few objecting opinions from esteemed fellow senior geeks to this but although all major imaging and cloning software can do what you want to accomplish, I wholeheartedly recommend forgetting them.

The easiest, painless, fast and 100% working solution to clone Windows 10 to another machine is simply to capture the Windows image to an install.wim file, then make an ISO based on it and install it on the new machine. You do not have to think the size of the source and target drive, you do not have to think partition system on them, you just go through an extremely simple process to capture Windows image and install it on a new PC. Windows 10 is extremely good in adapting to different hardware, that will not be an issue.

See this tutorial: Create Windows 10 ISO image from Existing Installation Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

In above mentioned tutorial's Part Four you'll find instructions on capturing the Windows image, and in Part Five on how to make an ISO image based on that captured image. Everything will be captured, from user profiles to installed software and user data. To make process faster and generated install.wim file smaller, it is recommended (but not obligatory) to first empty all user profile folders by backing up user personal data (docs, pics, music etc.) to another drive, capture install.wim, make an ISO, install on new PC, then restore backed up user data to new PC.

Use Rufus to create install media from your custom ISO to bypass FAT32 4 GB file size limit using highlighted settings:



This is my chosen method to clone Windows 10 to another machine, far simpler than restoring images on dissimilar hardware.

Kari

Kari said:

I am fully prepared to get quite a few objecting opinions from esteemed fellow senior geeks to this but although all major imaging and cloning software can do what you want to accomplish, I wholeheartedly recommend forgetting them.

The easiest, painless, fast and 100% working solution to clone Windows 10 to another machine is simply to capture the Windows image to an install.wim file, then make an ISO based on it and install it on the new machine. You do not have to think the size of the source and target drive, you do not have to think partition system on them, you just go through an extremely simple process to capture Windows image and install it on a new PC. Windows 10 is extremely good in adapting to different hardware, that will not be an issue.

See this tutorial: Create Windows 10 ISO image from Existing Installation Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

In above mentioned tutorial's Part Four you'll find instructions on capturing the Windows image, and in Part Five on how to make an ISO image based on that captured image. Everything will be captured, from user profiles to installed software and user data. To make process faster and generated install.wim file smaller, it is recommended (but not obligatory) to first empty all user profile folders by backing up user personal data (docs, pics, music etc.) to another drive, capture install.wim, make an ISO, install on new PC, then restore backed up user data to new PC.

Use Rufus to create install media from your custom ISO to bypass FAT32 4 GB file size limit using highlighted settings:



This is my chosen method to clone Windows 10 to another machine, far simpler than restoring images on dissimilar hardware.

Kari

Kari,

Thanks for this post and the link to that amazing tutorial. Can this method be used to clone a virtual machine install to a physical machine install, or a physical machine install to a virtual machine install?

x509 said:

Kari,

Thanks for this post and the link to that amazing tutorial. Can this method be used to clone a virtual machine install to a physical machine install, or a physical machine install to a virtual machine install?

When you capture Windows image to a custom install.wim file and then create an ISO based on it, or for instance simply replace original install.wim with your custom one on an already existing USB install media for same Windows version, it's a totally normal Windows 10 install media apart the fact that it already contains software and user profiles.

Image can be captured from any machine, physical or virtual.

It can be used to install Windows 10 on any hardware or virtual machine capable of running Windows 10, regardless of if BIOS / MBR or UEFI / GPT.

The installation using this custom ISO will of course take somewhat longer than using a standard original Windows 10 ISO for two reasons: first, the ISO already contains user profiles and software that has to be installed, and second because Windows setup needs to replace driver data ISO contains with actual drivers. Luckily, Windows 10 is extremely good in doing this.

Usually when creating custom ISO images you would clean install Windows, boot to Audit Mode from OOBE region selection before creating any user profiles, customize Windows and finally run Sysprep with generalizing switch to make image hardware independent, containing only native Windows drivers. However, as an existing Windows installation can't be generalized without removing all UWP apps and even then it most often fails, this, the ISO containing drivers from one installation which need to replaced when installed on another hardware, this is the only con in the method. But, as I mentioned, Windows 10 is good in doing this. Personally I have had no issues transferring Windows 10 using ISO with install.wim captured from source machine.

Kari

KabyBlue said:

1) In order to get around the 3rd-party drivers contained in the initial captured install.wim file from the source PC as you mentioned, could one use the dism command to remove all 3rd-party drivers prior from the install.wim?

Yes. You could also use Device Manager to uninstall all third party drivers, shut down and capture the image, However, this is quite unnecessary. Windows 10 is as I have mentioned really good in replacing drivers when deployed / installed on differencing hardware.

KabyBlue said:

2) Give or take, how many times have you used this method in the past and what is your success rate?

With Windows 10, I've not done it as often as my earlier posts might accidentally indicate. With earlier versions of Windows (7, 8 & 8.1) I've done this for sure 50+ times.

Not sure what to answer, but with Windows 10 it must be at least 10 times, no more than 20 times since the release of first beta build of Windows 10 in October 2014.

It has never failed for me.

KabyBlue said:

3) Would this work on a Windows 8.1 PC going to another Win 8.1 PC as well?

Yes, this works with Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 even better because those operating systems can be generalized (made hardware independent) after the installation without issues.

In 7, 8 & 8.1, just run Sysprep first with following command:

%windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown

That generalizes Windows image, then shuts down. Now capture the image, replace the install.wim on ISO for the same Windows version with your custom install.wim, burn the ISO to a DVD or USB flash drive and install on different hardware.

In Windows 10, UWP apps will be provisioned in a way that makes generalizing almost impossible. Luckily, W10 is so good in adapting to different hardware.

KabyBlue said:

4) I would presume the install.wim would be very large (considering you are saving applications + user data), would the install.wim still be able to fit in a Fat32 formated USB drive? I see you recommended using Rufus to format the partition to NTFS, but most new UEFI based PC can't boot from NTFS via USB right?

A bit strange fact but theoretically there's absolutely no reason why UEFI computers can't be booted from NTFS. However, some (in fact most) hardware manufacturers still include this restriction to their UEFI. Rufus bypasses this artificial restriction by creating a small FAT32 partition on USB drive to boot a UEFI machine, which then gives the control to an NTFS partition containing Windows install image with your custom install.wim file.

A quote from https://github.com/pbatard/uefi-ntfs:

As an aside, and because there appears to exist a lot of innacurate information about this on the Internet, it needs to be stressed out that there is absolutely nothing in the UEFI specifications that actually forces the use of FAT32 for UEFI boot. On the contrary, UEFI will happily boot from ANY file system, as long as your firmware has a driver for it. As such, it is only the choice of system manufacturers, who tend to only include a driver for FAT32, that limits the default boot capabilities of UEFI, and that leads many to erroneously believe that only FAT32 can be used for UEFI boot.

Rufus (download: Rufus, the creator of it @Akeo is our member) makes this automatically. You only need to take care of the highlighted settings, set Partition scheme to MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI-CSM, and set File System to NTFS:



This will create a USB flash drive with NTFS file system to allow you to add as big files as you want to / need to, creating a small FAT32 partition to take care of the boot phase. My own current custom install.wim is over 14 GB, I have had no issues in using that install media on devices not accepting NTFS boot.

Kari

Kari said:

Yes, this works with Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 even better because those operating systems can be generalized (made hardware independent) after the installation without issues.
In 7, 8 & 8.1, just run Sysprep first with following command:
%windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown

That generalizes Windows image, then shuts down. Now capture the image, replace the install.wim on ISO for the same Windows version with your custom install.wim, burn the ISO to a DVD or USB flash drive and install on different hardware.
In Windows 10, UWP apps will be provisioned in a way that makes generalizing almost impossible. Luckily, W10 is so good in adapting to different hardware.

What about the SID (security identifiers) issue that is brought up on some articles in regards to multiple PCs having the same SID on a network? Also, do you recommend not running sysprep even though some articles online state that it is indeed possible to run sysprep on a Win 10 machine (except on a PC that had an OS version upgrade)?

Using Sysprep in Windows 10

Kari said:

Rufus (download: Rufus, the creator of it @Akeo is our member) makes this automatically. You only need to take care of the highlighted settings, set Partition scheme to MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI-CSM, and set File System to NTFS:
This will create a USB flash drive with NTFS file system to allow you to add as big files as you want to / need to, creating a small FAT32 partition to take care of the boot phase. My own current custom install.wim is over 14 GB, I have had no issues in using that install media on devices not accepting NTFS boot.

I am familiar with Rufus. It's the best app IMO for the creation of a bootable ISO. They only concern I have is if I have to create the USB using an MBR partition, I would not be able to install a GPT based UEFI Windows 10. Could I convert the partition to UEFI GPT at a later time?

Thnx for the responce in advance...