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Restore Entire PC EXCEPT FOR WINDOWS OS

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I have a recent "Entire PC" backup using the Acronis True Image WD Edition that came with my WD Passport external drive via a USB 3.0 connection. Now we have a new computer that comes with the latest Windows 10 Home operating system on the 2TB SSD.  I would like to "Restore" all programs and data files to the new computer from that backup.  However, I do NOT want to overwrite the new OS that came with the new computer.

First of all, I understand that when registering Windows, Microsoft gets a snapshot of the computer's configuration (drives, connected accessories, etc.maybe even an identifying number)  If you try to boot up Windows into a differently configured computer, there are all sorts of alarms sent to Microsoft and it is a hassle to straighten that out as I understand it.  Plus the new Windows with the new computer will have certain of the latest parameters unique to this manufacturer's current computers written into Windows or at least closely attached to it.

Is a "Restore" possible without the operating system being written to the new drive?  All that I have read about "Restore" includes the OS.  Of course, the same with "Clone Drive" which I do not want to do either.

Old computer: Dell Inspiron with Win 10 Home 64-bit

New computer: Dell XPS with Win 10 Home 64-bit

The WD Passport external drive was bought in April of 2018 to give you an idea of the release time of Acronis TI WD Edition program.  There is no serial number to this software that I can find.

If this is possible, please suggest a step-by-step procedure to do it.  Also, in the Acronis program, in the "Backup" section, there is no choice to Restore the data.  Isn't that where Restore is supposed to be?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Joel R

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Joel, welcome to these public User Forums.

Please see KB 19296: Acronis products cannot be used to transfer applications to different system or upgrade OS

Sorry but you cannot just restore your programs / applications from your backup image.

You can restore your user data such as documents, pictures, videos etc but you still need to exercise some care when doing so and not just try to restore the whole C:\Users profile folder regardless of perhaps having an 'identical' user profile on the new PC.  If you did that latter action, you would break that profile on the new PC by overwriting hidden / system files and registry entries.  This is because no users are ever identical between different PC's!

When recovering user data from within the ATI application, then check that the Recovery Options are set to not restore the original user ownership or permissions from the old PC, so that the restored data will be owned by the new profile doing the recovery action.

Steve,

Thank you so much. I was trying to avoid re--installing all my applications onto the new computer but I see that is not possible with True Image. Thanks for the additional hints, too.

Joel