Program from Windows 7 to Windows 10

[man_named_corn]

Hello all, today I was working on a clients computer and did not know how to respond. Their old hard drive was from a prebuilt HP desktop. the computer crapped out but the hard drive is still perfect. We built them a new pc but we are running into an issue where the software they use can't be transferred between systems or work on another computer or be updated to work on windows 10. So we either need a windows 7 boot drive from somewhere and then plug the drive into the new one as a secondary drive or find a way for it to work on windows 10. When the old hard drive is just plugged straight into the new pc it boots up to the Lock Screen but it locks the USB ports from being used 

[SupaKomputa]

create the same username for the new computer, so it can have the same user folder structure.

move Program files (the app), Program data folder and All documents in the user folder (including the hidden one).

hopefully this will work, but some programs cannot work with this method since it has to be registered in the registry to run.

[Middcore]

2 hours ago, man_named_corn said:

So we either need a windows 7 boot drive from somewhere and then plug the drive into the new one as a secondary drive

 

Having Windows installs on more than one drive in the same system is generally a poor idea. 

 

It might help if you actually told us what the software is.

 

If this is a matter of the owner losing the activation key, or some legacy piece of software that's never been updated to work on Windows 10, there's not much you can do.