Windows 10: How to move Windows 10 from OLD desktop to NEW laptop

so i was thinking installing this Best free backup software for Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc - EaseUS Todo Backup Free

to cloning my entire OLD Desktop HDD to the NEW laptop HDD and then putting my laptop HDD back inside and then let windows auto configure it self is that ok or do i need to do some else or more


NOTE old HHD is 500GB while new HDD is 1TB

:)

 

How do I move my Favorites list from my old laptop running Windows 8 over to my new desktop running Windows 10?

* Original title: Favorites

How do I move my Favorites list from my old laptop running Windows 8 over to my new desktop running Windows 10?

 

Transferring data to new computer

How do I transfer data from my old laptop (windows 7) to new laptop (windows 10

* Moved from Insider

 

There are two obstacles that you might face:

UEFI Firmware v. legacy BIOS. Legacy BIOS uses MBR partitioning for the drive and an active partition to boot from. UEFI uses GPT partitioning for the drive and boots from an EFI System Partition that, in most cases must be formatted as FAT32. Most UEFI computers have settings in the UEFI Firmware (BIOS) to allow booting either in legacy BIOS or CSM mode. CSM is just a different term for legacy BIOS emulation. So - as long as you are moving from UEFI to UEFI - or moving from legacy BIOS to legacy BIOS or to UEFI set to boot in legacy BIOS or CSM mode you will be OK for that. You can convert a legacy BIOS installation to GPT partitioning and manually create the EFI System Partition so it would boot in UEFI mode if you wanted to do that.

The second obstacle is the SATA disk controller mode. There are three basic modes: IDE, AHCI, and RAID. In a single drive system the most efficient controller mode is AHCI. You old computer may very well be set to IDE mode. These settings are in BIOS (or UEFI firmware) settings. In order to change modes you must first delete the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller drive from Device Manager. Then you restart the computer and enter BIOS or UEFI setup, change the SATA controller mode to AHCI, then reboot the computer. If you don't delete the controller driver first from device manager, Windows will just hang during the loading process.

If you have those two things set up in advance, cloning an existing Windows 10 installation to a new computer will usually work. Windows 10 will pick up the new hardware and install the drivers for it. If the new computer comes with the same version of Windows 10 as the old computer, Home or Pro, then activation should pick up the license for the new computer and activate itself. If there is no Windows license existing for the new computer, or the versions of Windows do not match, then you need to set up in advance to transfer the license from the old computer to the new computer through a Microsoft Account:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530

We like to use Macrium Reflect Free to do our imaging and cloning:
Macrium Software | Your Image is Everything

I've had personal experience with moving Windows between computers. My daughter's laptop needed to go back to ASUS for warranty repair. We moved Windows 10 from her ASUS laptop to a Gateway laptop we keep for a spare. Completely different hardware. Then when her ASUS was returned, we moved the same Windows 10 back to her ASUS computer.

 

Didn`t the laptop come with W10 installed ?

 

no my laptop came with Ubuntu 16.04 (now i am using Arch Linux)
i just want to use the windows install for some games every once in a while (it's not really essential for getting work done)

no my sata runs in ACHI mode so i am fine

it is EUFI so i should be fine

 

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,

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.

 

Interesting idea @Kari... I am considering testing this out whenever the opportunity next arises but had some questions...

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?

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

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

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?

Thnx in advance...

 

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.

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.

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.

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 pbatard/uefi-ntfs:

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.

 

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

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...

 

That method will work just fine Kari, I however prefer the one click method as MR does indeed work as designed.*Wink

 

OK, I will bite (just for fun not for criticism).

I do not really agree what you are saying is FAR SIMPLER. It is almost certainly the most robust way without using 3rd party tools,and certainly how one would typically deploy images in a corporate environment.

For a one off transfer, I would say it is rather complex for average user.

It is pretty easy to sysprep an install, create an image backup and restore to another pc. Since you taught me the basics, I have done his several times, and never had a problem. In fact Windows 10 is so good, even sysprepping is hardly necessary.

I just create a Macrium Image backup, load it in ViBoot (need pro) as a vm, sysprep it and save as another image which is the restored to another pc. It is not necessary to use viboot, but if so a second copy of original Macrium Reflect image is a good plan just in case things go wrong.

There are more than one ways to skin a cat. In the end a user has to choose the method they are most comfortable with.

C.

 

That's mostly a myth. As long as the NETBIOS name is different, there will be no issues in a workgroup environment. In domain environment you have to manually change the SID of the clone.

I most definitely do not recommend running Sysprep with generalizing switch (required to create new SID) on an existing Windows 10 installation because it always fails due UWP app provisioning.

I have great respect for Petri IT Knowledgebase site in general and Daniel Petri as writer & tech guru in particular, but that article is simply wrong (it happens even to best of us!): Sysprep with generalizing switch will fail when run in existing Windows 10 installation due app provisioning issues.

Feel free to try it on any machine with an existing Windows 10 installation giving this command in Command Prompt (CP doesn't have to be elevated):

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

This is what you will get:





Checking the log, you'll find this error (UWP app package mentioned as cause might be different, but the error is always the same):

Error SYSPRP Package Microsoft.OneConnect_3.1706.1672.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe was installed for a user, but not provisioned for all users. This package will not function properly in the sysprep image.

Generalizing should only be used, is only meant to be used in clean install in Audit Mode: install Windows 10 on reference machine, boot to Audit Mode from OOBE region selection screen with CTRL + SHIFT + F3 before any user profiles have been created and no apps have been provisioned, customize Windows as you prefer and generalize with Sysprep.

I guess you either misunderstood my previous reply, or didn't read it through. Choosing the options I told, Rufus will create a USB install media that can be used to boot any UEFI computer to install Windows 10 using GPT partitioning. No MBR <> GPT conversions needed.

No comments, apart from that I would need to be extremely drunk or otherwise completely lost my mind to even consider using a third party app to image / clone any Windows installation to be transferred to dissimilar hardware, when capturing Windows image with DISM, creating an ISO and clean installing (with existing software, user profiles & settings) is so much easier and simpler and most importantly, will never fail.

I use Macrium Reflect to image my machines to be able to restore them if / when something happens. I just would never use it to clone my Windows installation to dissimilar hardware.