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Need some perspective regarding moving all content from old to new laptop

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Hi all- I am currently awaiting delivery on a new laptop running Win 8.1.  I have an 'OLD' laptop that runs WIN 10 and I have lots of 'stuff' on it in terms of apps/programs. I have TI 2015 and have created both a Resue Disk and a Universal Recovery Disk & USB drive.

The 'NEW' laptop does not have a DVD Drive and I don't have an external one so I'm hoping the Universal Recovery USB will work for booting purposes on 'NEW'.

I'm trying to formulate a process in my mind for accomplishing this task so I'm asking for some 'top level' perspective on the overall process.

Here's what I've (rightly or wrongly) formulated thus far. I'm sure I have some misconceptions about how to do this but that's why I'm here.....

Look it over and comment as you see fit. Remember, "I don't know what I don't know", as they say.

Here's my first cut-

  1. Backup ‘OLD’ (image) to external HD. (WIN 10)
  2. Install (move) TI 2015 from 'OLD' to 'NEW' and register using product key (??)
  3. Backup ‘NEW’ (image) to external HD (WIN 8.1)
  4. Invoke (boot) Univ. Restore on NEW using TI Univ. Restore USB Drive; ‘restore’ image(tib) of 'OLD' (from External HD) to 'NEW' HD.
  5. ????? Don’t know what happens next given I’ve never actually used the Restore Utilility…….

Thanks for the help,

Bob T.

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Anyone? Surely there's a couple of you guys that have done this, or am I going to assume the role of resident expert? ;<)

Well,  given I've just read that Universal Restore covers up to Win 8.1 and I'm not sure this is going to work for me since I updated my old laptop to win10 and deleted the backup to Win7. All my current backups are win10 images.

I do have some old win7 backups but of course I might lose some apps and data using it. This is a bit disconcerting. The new laptop has 8.1 but it would be overwritten by the 'Restore' supposedly (and hopefully) to win10 but there's no mention of win10 compatibilty for Universal Restore......

I also see that I need to supply all the drivers for the (new?) laptop during the Restore process. I suppose I can get them on the HP support website or simply copy them from the win/INF folder, but I'm still not certain this is going to work with a win10 recovery to dissimilar hardware........

I suppose that given I'm not getting any commentary or input here that I'll have to go it alone. I'll backup the new laptop (win8.1) to insure that I can later recover it if all this goes south (likely, given I don't know what the heck I'm doing, LOL).

Bob T.

Well, I thought I would follow up on this post given I didn't get any responses at all here. I was succesfull at migrating my old laptop backup to the new laptop. I was astonished that when I did a simple restore (without Acronis Universal Restore) that following a reboot the laptop (new) reinstalled all its drivers and came to life with no discernable problems......So, after much head scratching, reading many articles here regarding this process, only to find out that those products are not 'HOME' products (http://kb.acronis.com/content/35681), I found a video that describes the process in relatively simple terms but all I did was the first operation of what was supposed to be a two part process: Restore, then boot and install drivers via Acronis Universal Restore. I did not use AUR at all.......

Bob T.

Bob, did you have any problems with Windows Activation if you have just restored an image of your old laptop to your new one as I would expect that your copy of Windows would require to be activated for the new processor and hardware of the new one?

If you have an OEM licence for your laptop version of Windows, i.e. one tied to the laptop manufacturer, then this is not transferable to a different brand computer nor to different hardware, then you may be running the new laptop on a trial licence basis as the same licence cannot be used for two sets of hardware, unless you have a volume licence.

The new laptop had a key for Win8 and I had already activated it when I first received it. I then upgraded the Win8 on the new laptop to Win10 prior to the 'Recovery'. The old laptop (same brand, HP, but different model) also had Win10 so the backup image was that of a Win10 op system.

I don't believe there are 'keys' associated with Win10 (it's free) but I do believe that in order to be 'eligible' for the upgrade to Win10 they verify and use that key (otherwise, no upgrade is possible). 

Following the 'Recovery' I observed the new laptop boot and install drivers by itself and saw no need to run the Universal Restore. I verified all the drivers by going to HP Support and allowing it to update any that were out of date. It did a couple of updates the video drivers and that's all. I also went through the Device manager, line by line to verify that it indeed had the correct drivers installed for the new laptop hardware. It did.

Here's a screen shot of the new laptop and curiously, I noticed that all the attributes are correct except for the model. It shows HP G71 but should be HP Envy M7. Everything else is correct for the new laptop. Note that it says it's 'activated'. I also noted that the 'product ID' is the same for both PC's but I'm not sure that's the 'key'. I really never paid attention to it. The only way to do so would be to recover the 'new' image to the 'new laptop' and I will not do that unless I have problems. I didn't think to record it at the time.

So to summarize: Acronis 'Recovered' an image from 'old-win10' to 'new-win10', including the 'Product ID', whatever that is, and the 'new' shows it's activated. All my Applications and data are functional and I had only one Website require authentication due to different hardware (Banking App).

I did not need to run 'Universal restore' and it is my understanding that all it would do would be to assure the installation of the necessary drivers in order to boot.

 

 

 

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Ok, that makes sense Bob, I have updated a number of systems to Windows 10 and don't have any licence keys / COA etc but know that Windows 10 is licenced to the specific hardware on which it is activated, thus as both your laptops had previously been activated for Windows 10, the restore of one to the other would still be recognised as activated by the hardware signature.

Thanks for the update, it is useful information to keep in mind for the future and beats any of the third party solutions to try to migrate programs and data between machines though I would suspect that it helps to have similar hardware, i.e. source and target machines both having the same processor manufacturer (Intel or AMD) otherwise would probably need Universal Restore and extra device drivers etc.