Acronis Universal Restore - recover to virtual machine?

Michael, you cannot bypass Windows activation by using Acronis Universal Restore with or without using a virtual machine - Windows licencing is based on hardware signature and your virtual drive will show a very different signature than the original Windows 7 machine.

Ditto to Steve - the Acronis backup/restore process will work, but Windows will see it is different hardware and it won't license unless you have a full retail boxed license that is transferable. In that case, you could transfer it to the VM, but then the physical machine would not be legally licensed anymore.

Thanks to you both on this subject.

The physical machine has been dismantled and the original hard drive has already been wiped so the licencing issue would have been okay. I'm thinking that the original copy of windows on the old machine must have been an OEM so I presume that means it is not transferable.

Going back to the Acronis explanation of "With Acronis Universal Restore you can recover system backup system of one machine to another one with dissimilar hardware. " . My queries are:

1. Am I right in thinking, then, that I could copy across all the programs and data from the old machine to the new machine as long as the new machine already had its own copy of Windows?

2. If a motherboard failed and I had to replace it, does this mean that I could restore it from the back up but would still have to purchase a new Windows licence?

Thanks

Mike

You are correct - it was likely an OEM license - those are not transferable as they are tied to the specific motherboard of the device it was installed and licensed to originally.

The only time you can get away with transferring an OEM image from one system to another is with Windows 10, but there are a few caveats:  

If you have an old system image that is Windows 10 OEM and a new system that came with Windows 10 OEM and both are the same (i.e. both 64-bit and both either HOME or PRO), then you can move your old image to the new system and still be licensed!  The key is to make sure to activate the original OEM license on the new system with Microsoft at least once first before you restore your old image to it.  Once it's registered with Microsoft, that hardware can always be licensed with Windows 10 again as long as it's the same type of OS (64-bit and Home or 64-bit and Pro - needs to be apples to apples) so it won't care anymore.

Yes, alternatively, if you have a transferable license (boxed license), you can use Acronis to completely transfer the OS "as is" from one computer to another and re-license the system through a phone call to Microsoft if it doesn't automatically activate- regardless of hardware, so long as there is only one active version of that key in play at a time. The capability is there and we use Acronis at work for this purpose, deploying enterprise licensed images to all kinds of different hardware, but using only one standard image.

HOWEVER, just because it is possible, there are situations where it won't work...

1) I.E. Your backup image was made from an UEFI system and you want to put the image on an older system that only supports legacy/bios.  You can go from legacy/bios to UEFI, but never backwards from UEFI back to legacy/bios. 

2) The system you want to transfer the OS to does not support that OS.  For instance, you have a newer Windows 10 image and want to put that on an older machine that only supports XP/Vista - it may work, but not likely if the hardware of the old machine does not have Windows 10 drivers since it was never intended for that hardware to support that newer OS.

3) SATA mode in the bios should be the same.  So, if your image was made where the SATA mode of the bios was AHCI, you will want to make sure the new system can set the SATA mode to AHCI as well (likewise if RAID, it should be raid on both).  There are exceptions and work-a-rounds, but the general rule, is keep the SATA mode in the bios the same or you're likely going to have problems.  Universal Restore often fixes this issue as it can generalize the drivers in the OS, but still, best to go same/same if you can. Not all systems allow you to configure or even view what the SATA mode is configured as though.

Many thanks for that explanation

You're welcome!