Windows 10: Move Windows 10 to a new PC

I am running windows 10 64bits and going to upgrade my PC hardware, including changing mother board, CPU and hard disks. Is it possible to create an image of my current PC and move to the new one without installing all my currently running programs and data?

:)

 

Move windows 10 from old PC to a brand new Pc that has just formatted drives (NTFS).No OS installed.

Is your Window 10 an OEM version? For example, if it came preinstalled on your old computer it is.

If it's OEM, its license ties it permanently to the first computer it's installed on. It may never be moved to another.

 

Move windows 10 from old PC to a brand new Pc that has just formatted drives (NTFS).No OS installed.

The operating system belongs to the first computer it was installed on and cannot be activated on another computer. You will have to install windows 10 and buy the license for the new computer. Create Media--

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-create-installation-media

 

Yes. Make sure you are logged into a Microsoft Account on the old computer and you see this:

 

You can try but W10 will need different motherboard drivers than those contained in the image from the old PC. Hopefully, W10 will recognize the hardware changes on first boot and install the required drivers. I would download the drivers you need for the new motherboard and have these available when you configure the new PC.

 

See these links for additional information:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ardware-change
How to re-activate Windows 10 after a hardware change | Windows Central

 

This is the "proper" way to do it.

1) Make image backup of current install

2) remove any 3rd party store apps (ones not included with Windows). These tend to cause sysprep to fail.
If it fails, look in log and see which app is causing issue and uninstall it.

Sometimes, apps annoyingly refuse to uninstall and you may need to run an admin powershell commmand

e.g. this one always causes me problems

34791E63.CanonInkjetPrintUtility_2.6.0.5_neutral__6e5tt8cgb93ep
run following:

Get-AppxPackage 34791E63.CanonInkjetPrintUtility_2.6.0.5_neutral__6e5tt8cgb93ep | Remove-AppxPackage

3) in file explorer go to c:\windows\system32\sysprep

4) run sysprep.exe and a pop up box will pop up

5) select oobe from pull down menu

6) select generalise

7) select shutdown

8) Then hardware drivers are removed. Once pc has shutdown, transfer hdd to new pc and boot pc.

9) pc will go through oobe as if brand new install. Windows 10 will download drivers it needs in same way as any clean install.

10) create a new local account.

11) once logged in, reboot and switch to original account. You can then delete new account.

 

Is sysprep a standard tool since I don't seem to have it?

 

\Windows\System32\Sysprep\

I've never bothered with sysprep before a move.

 

I wrote a tutorial for this back in 2011, for Windows 7 on our sister site Seven Forums, but's it applies for the most to Windows 10, too: Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer - Windows 7 Help Forums

As Cereberus mentioned, UWP apps make generalizing W10 with Sysprep sometimes difficult. Have to rethink that before making a W10 tut about this process.




EDIT, totally off topic:

Hadn't thought about that tutorial in long time, was now quite surprised to see it seems to have been quite popular with over 1.2 million views meaning it has been viewed on average over 530 times per day during these past six and a half years *Smile

 

Thank you all for the inputs. In the past when I change new motherboard and CPU, I have to go through all the trouble of reinstalling the Windows OS and all third party programs, like MS Office, Adobe PS, etc. I am wondering if there is some way to just make an image of my current PC and copy it to my new PC like ghosting or cloning from one hard disk to another.

 

Yeah -

1) install Macrium Reflect Free, and create a rescue usb drive.

2) add Macrium boot entry from other tasks.

3) Do sysprep as above.

4) when sysprep is finished, and pc has shutdown, restart pc and boot to Macrium Reflect.

5) Create backup image to external drive.

6) on new pc, boot from Macrium Rescue drivr, and restore image to ssd.

 

To be fair, Windows 10 is pretty good but not infallible. Problem is if moving drive creates issue, putting drive back on old pc may also fail as drivers will have been changed to reflect new pc.

Always make image backup first.

 

Hi Kari,

This problem only arises for third party apps which are not installed for all users but just a single user.

In most cases, uninstalling them sorts issues. However, sometimes one forgets to remove a certain app, and sysprep bombs out. It is easy to identify the app looking at the sysprep error log. The sysprep error log is pretty clear - see extracts below.

If app will not uninstall using normal uninstall, it can be uninstalled using admin poweshell e.g. for app that causes my sysprep o fail, and refuses to uninstall using normal uninstall :-

Get-AppxPackage 34791E63.CanonInkjetPrintUtility_2.6.0.5_neutral__6e5tt8cgb93ep | Remove-AppxPackage

As sysprep bombs out at first error, so you may have to repeat above ie try sysrep, remove one app, sysprep again, remove second app.

It may be possible to provision the apps so they are available for all users, but I saw conflicting and incomplete info on web, and gave up, deciding it was just easier to delete app and reinstall (could be a problem for some really big apps though).

As an aside, well done on popularity of W7 tutorial, and with a few words of above and updating to Windows 10, it would be a great new tutorial. One minor difference is the way Windows 10 logs in, you end up booting to temporary account first and need to reboot to boot to original account(s).



----------- extracts --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




2017-05-30 10:24:08, Error SYSPRP Package 34791E63.CanonInkjetPrintUtility_2.6.0.5_neutral__6e5tt8cgb93ep was installed for a user, but not provisioned for all users. This package will not function properly in the sysprep image.

2017-05-30 10:24:08, Error SYSPRP Failed to remove apps for the current user: 0x80073cf2.

 

I've seen it to happen with native Windows apps like Xbox, Groove and Films & TV. This from only a few minutes ago:




(Click to enlarge.)

Also, some Microsoft's own and third party "suggested" apps cause this. They are not Windows 10 native apps but are shown as suggested. For instance, at least on my numerous installs of EN-GB Windows 10, a third party game Candy Crush Saga will almost always be shown on default Start; the app is not installed but its tile is there, and app folder exists. It will be installed on first run, but already the presence of its tile and folder sometimes causes generalizing to fail.

Screenshot from Start after a clean install. Marked not native but suggested apps can all cause Sysprep to fail even before fully installed.





Minecraft is a good example of a Microsoft suggested app present by default as a tile after fresh, clean install, fully installed on first run but occasionally causing Sysprep to fail even if not fully installed.