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Recover PC1 to PC2?

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My laptop is failing.  I want to recover it's 'image' (clone?) to a second laptop.  How do i do this and prevent any issues with the activated windows serial number.  That's the most obvious problem I might have .....there may be others of the same ilk.

The receiving laptop will not have the Acronis 'directory' of backups....will it find what it needs on the offline backup drive ok?

Thanks,  Bruce

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Bruce, whilst you can either clone or use backup & recovery to copy your failing laptop drive to your second laptop, if there are any significant hardware differences between the two laptops, then you may need to use the Acronis Universal Restore media to prepare the second laptop so it can boot into Windows.

With regards to Windows Activation, if you have an OEM version of Windows, i.e. Dell, HP branded version etc, then this is licensed / activated only for the original machine it was used on and cannot be transferred to the second system without requiring to be activated again, which in turn will most likely require purchasing a new license key.  Only the full Retail versions of Windows allow for moving the license to new systems.

If you install ATIH 2016 on the second laptop, including transferring and activating the product, then you can connect your backup drive to that second laptop and either use the option to "Add existing backup" or let Acronis find your backups on the backup drive.

With Windows 10 "upgrades" if both systems are running Windows 10 and the same version (home or pro), licensing won't be an issue as the hardware is licensed for Windows 10 forever and doesn't care what the original license is/was.  All other versions of Windows are off the table though unless you have a full retail license, in which case, you can move the license, but would most likely have to call Microsoft to activate it again.  

Universal restore does its job and does it well.  However, variations in technology with old systems and new ones make the process harder for end users now.  In the past, all computers were Bios only (legacy/csm/mbr).  Most newer computeres are UEFI/GPT out of the box.  Some can enable legacy mode, some cannot.  If your image is legacy and your new machine is only UEFI, then that's a problem.  Likewise, if your image is UEFI only and you only have a legacy system, that's a problem. 

If you don't have the legacy/UEFI issue, then you also need to make sure the SATA mode is set the same on both systems (RAID, AHCI, IDE or SATA).  If these are not the same in the bios, you also won't be able to boot a transferred system. 

If you have the correct support (legacy or UEFI) and the SATA mode set correctly and have transferred the image successfully, but get a BSOD, then run universal restore to generalize the drivers and it should boot up.  Then install drives as necessary.  

Thanks Steve and Bobbo.  Both are ok on bios and sata. Both have win 10 from the recent free upgrade process.  I assume I'd have to transfer the ATIH license to the second machine to complete the process.  And, as long as the first machine is still functional, it seems like I would have to work with MS to not have the same activation key on both machines.

I very much appreciate your help.

Bruce

Hi Bruce, since both system are already running Windows 10 and the hardware is licensed, you shouldn't have to worry about the MS licensing - it should activate on it's own.  If there is a problem though (sometimes you just have to give it a little time), then contacting Microsoft should square it away.

Acronis will transfer, but at some point will prompt you that you have too many licenses activated as it will detect the new hardware.  You should then be prompted to log into your account from the app and it will ask you to deactivate it on one of the existing machines (it shows them my computer name).  Once you remove it from there, then that should activate the license on the transferred OS system.

If you do run into an Acronis license issue though, just start chat with technical  support.  License issues are always covered at no charge.