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Backup Win10 for restore on Win 11

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I'm trying to move my win 10 device to a new windows 11 and only want the files and programs, not the OS - How can I do that?

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Jim, welcome to these public User Forums.

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

You can backup any of your user data, files, photos, music etc and restore this on the new Win 11 system but not programs / applications.  The latter have to be reinstalled.

The only other option would be to upgrade your Win 10 system to Win 11 then backup the whole system and restore that backup to the Win 11 machine, which will completely wipe the target drive and repartition it etc.  If considering this option, then backup the working Win 11 system first in case the restored (Win 10 updated to Win 11) backup doesn't work as expected, so that you can get back to your starting point.

Steve Smith wrote:

<<< SNIP >>>

The only other option would be to upgrade your Win 10 system to Win 11 then backup the whole system and restore that backup to the Win 11 machine, which will completely wipe the target drive and repartition it etc.  If considering this option, then backup the working Win 11 system first in case the restored (Win 10 updated to Win 11) backup doesn't work as expected, so that you can get back to your starting point.

Steve Smith advice is the same as I would give. The only impediment would be if the old PC does not support Window 11. You should also make sure that on the new PC Windows 11 has been activated before you do anything else. One complicating factor would be if one PC has Pro version and the other has the Home version. 

Ian