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How to migrate to new computer?

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I'm not very experienced with acronis or how to properly backup and restore programs and data.  I have a new computer build with a fresh copy of windows 10. I want to move the programs and data from my old computer to the new one. Everything works with the old computer, so I can create new backups or whatever is needed. I don't need to move windows over, but I do want to move the programs and data over. Can someone explain the best way to get this accomplished? 

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Steve, sorry but Acronis True Image cannot be used to move your installed applications / programs from one computer to another.

See KB 19296: Acronis products cannot be used to transfer applications to different system or upgrade OS which explains why this is so.

You should be able to backup your user data and restore this to the new computer but this should not try to include such as the AppData folder structure or contents.

If your new computer is working well with a clean install of Windows 10 then I would recommend staying with this and install any additional programs that you need.  You will still need any new licenses for products requiring activation, such as MS Office, where the license is tied to the hardware signature where first installed.

I was afraid of that. I have a couple programs that I cannot download anymore and will not be able to put them on the new computer by any means I can find.

 

If I was to clone the old computer hard drive and restore to the new one, I'm guessing windows wouldn't work on the new one.  Do you think I would able able to use the new computer by using the activation code from the copy of windows that is already on the new computer?

Steve, if you have the same edition of Windows 10 that has been activated on each computer, then you could migrate the whole OS and applications from the old to the new computer.  Doing so may need the use of Acronis Universal Restore if there are significant hardware differences in play.

See KB 59876: Acronis True Image 2018: how to restore to dissimilar hardware for an overview / outline of the process that would be involved.

I would strongly recommend making a full disk backup of the new computer before embarking on doing this so that you will have a way to get back to square one if you cannot get it to work.

An alternative, would be to buy a spare disk drive for the new computer and swap this in to replace the current working Windows 10 OS drive, so that anything you do will be with the replacement disk - this would have the added benefit of allowing you to identify any new device drivers etc that may be needed to get the older OS to work with the new hardware.

The spare drive, is used to replace the current Win 10 OS drive in the new computer, would allow you to restore your old computer backup image to that spare drive, then test whether this would boot into Windows on the new computer.  It also means that you could always replace the original disk in the new computer for an easy means of getting back to a working Win 10 OS.

Actually what about transfering all, then reinstall the software from the new computer. So you keep what you have and put the new computer windows and anything that comes with it.