Transferring programs to new PC, do paid programs work?

[Thready]

I have about 100 GB of programs on my PC that I really don't want to have to reinstall to my new PC because I'll have to email people to get the license keys

 

I was thinking about buying a program that would let me transfer everything to my new PC, but I was wondering how well that stuff worked. Any ideas? 

 

Do I need to transfer anything from the registry? Do those programs do it automatically?

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Thready said:

Do those programs do it automatically?

You can clone one hard drive to another, but there isn't, as far as I am aware, software to move programs from one install to another.

[Thirdgen89GTA]

What OS is the current PC?  And does that OS run on the new hardware?

 

There are options.  Radium_Angel said "Clone" and while cloning can work, its best to use the DISM and Sysprep tools to move your Windows install to new hardware.  There are also paid applications that can do all of these sys prep steps for you.

 

There are also applications like PC Mover that can copy applications to a new computer, but nothing is guaranteed to work.

 

But in truth, do you really want to carry all that garbage to the new hardware?  Windows slows down with bloat overtime, and a freshly imaged machine is much snappier.

 

 

 

 

[Thready]

Just now, Thirdgen89GTA said:

What OS is the current PC?  And does that OS run on the new hardware?

 

There are options.  Radium_Angel said "Clone" and while cloning can work, its best to use the DISM and Sysprep tools to move your Windows install to new hardware.  There are also paid applications that can do all of these sys prep steps for you.

 

There are also applications like PC Mover that can copy applications to a new computer, but nothing is guaranteed to work.

 

But in truth, do you really want to carry all that garbage to the new hardware?  Windows slows down with bloat overtime, and a freshly imaged machine is much snappier.

 

 

 

 

They're both Windows 10 and I have 7 photo editing apps that I don't have the keys for so it's going to be a mess getting the keys.

[Thirdgen89GTA]

So if I were gunho on moving my existing Windows install into a new computer here is what I would do.

 

install a new hard drive into the OLD computer.

 

Use a program like clonezilla to copy the data from the old computer, to the new computer.  DISM can do this, but its not as easy as clonezilla.

 

Pull out the old hard drive so you can preserve it.

 

Now, with the old PC containing the cloned data on the new hard drive, boot it up and log into windows.

 

Save the below code into a file named "sysprep.xml" and save it to the root of C drive.  I found this answer file ages ago and have had no need to modify it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
    <settings pass="oobeSystem">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <OOBE>
                <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
                <HideLocalAccountScreen>true</HideLocalAccountScreen>
                <HideOEMRegistrationScreen>true</HideOEMRegistrationScreen>
                <HideOnlineAccountScreens>true</HideOnlineAccountScreens>
                <HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
                <NetworkLocation>Home</NetworkLocation>
                <ProtectYourPC>3</ProtectYourPC>
                <SkipMachineOOBE>true</SkipMachineOOBE>
                <SkipUserOOBE>true</SkipUserOOBE>
                <UnattendEnableRetailDemo>false</UnattendEnableRetailDemo>
            </OOBE>
        </component>
    </settings>
</unattend>

 

Open up a CMD Prompt window with "Run as Administrator" (right click the Windows Start Menu and find Command Prompt (Admin).

*You can also use Powershell (Admin) too

CD C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\
sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown /unattend:C:\sysprep.xml

 

When the computer finishes it will shut itself down.

 

Take the hard drive and move it into the new computer, then boot it up.

 

Your computer will boot-up install some devices, you will need to install some drivers to make it happy.

 

 

Note, your new computers BIOS boot mode needs to match the hard drive.  If your old computer is currently booting in Legacy BIOS mode, your new computer will need to be set the same.

 

It is possible to convert an installation from Legacy to UEFI, I do it all the time at work as we upgrade older Windows 10 installs to new versions of windows.  Our oldest imaged computers were imaged in Legacy BIOS mode with MBR formatted drives.  But Bitlocker runs best with GPT formatted drives, and it enables us to use UEFI Secure Mode Enabled boot.  So I use a tool from MS called MBR2GPT to convert the partition scheme from MBR to GPT, and then we can use UEFI Secure Boot with TPM chips for disk encryption.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Make a system image of the drive in question, then restore it on another drive. Both are tools provided by the OS. System imaging will preserve software activation and licenses unless the software uses some other method of IDing your computer, like whatever unique code is of storage drive itself.

 

Alternatively you could clone the drive.

[Catsrules]

I would really recommend not cloning computer thing, not only is it super messy there is a very high chance that the license will deactivate themselves because it detects new hardware. After all the entire point of the license keys is to stop people from installing the software on multiple computers. 

 

I would first try out Belarc Advisor see if it can find any keys to use. If that doesn't work honestly just email people to get the keys, your in for a world of hurt trying to clone hard drives and migrate programs over. I have done this for a few clients, and there computers always would have super obscure and weird problems. It is simply not worth it. 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

5 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

I would really recommend not cloning computer thing, not only is it super messy there is a very high chance that the license will deactivate themselves because it detects new hardware. After all the entire point of the license keys is to stop people from installing the software on multiple computers. 

 

I would first try out Belarc Advisor see if it can find any keys to use. If that doesn't work honestly just email people to get the keys, your in for a world of hurt trying to clone hard drives and migrate programs over. I have done this for a few clients, and there computers always would have super obscure and weird problems. It is simply not worth it. 

Hence why I said use clonezilla to clone the data to a new physical disk.

 

This way the original disk is preserved in case the move causes unexpected issues.