Old Machine --> New Machine?

  • Thread starter Thread starter gecko
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gecko

Suppose I buy a new machine - complete with new hard drives.
I know I can clone the hard drives on my old machine onto the new
machine's drives, but I have run into trouble before trying to use a
boot drive or copy thereof from an old machine on a different machine.
How can I do this more easily?

I know I can re-install all the apps and then copy all my data from
backup, but is there a faster way?

Thanks

-GECKO
 
gecko said:
Suppose I buy a new machine - complete with new hard drives.
I know I can clone the hard drives on my old machine onto the new
machine's drives, but I have run into trouble before trying to use a
boot drive or copy thereof from an old machine on a different machine.
How can I do this more easily?

I know I can re-install all the apps and then copy all my data from
backup, but is there a faster way?
Click to expand...

Not for free (that I know of). There is software that will transfer things
from one machine to another, but you are not just looking at files, but you
need registry settings and system DLLs, OCXs etc. If I were you, I would
re-install everything. This will give you nice clean installations, rather
than pulling over old installations of software along with problems and/or
inflated registry keys etc.

I think windows has a settings transfer wizard for the basic stuff, but not
sure how much it does.
 
gecko said:
Suppose I buy a new machine - complete with new hard drives.
I know I can clone the hard drives on my old machine onto the new
machine's drives, but I have run into trouble before trying to use a
boot drive or copy thereof from an old machine on a different machine.
How can I do this more easily?

I know I can re-install all the apps and then copy all my data from
backup, but is there a faster way?

Thanks

-GECKO
Click to expand...

You can't clone the drive. Or at least it will not be as simple as you
think. The motherboards and hardware will be different and the drivers
different. You could clone and then do a repair install to fix maybe,
I'm not the expert in this area, just passing on what I hear.
I normally just reload. If you have a cloning software, you might
consider a reload with a little bit of apps install and setup and then
clone the new system. It will give you a virgin config to save as a
valid system restore that will be 10 times faster to restore than a reload.
 
Suppose I buy a new machine - complete with new hard drives. I know I
can clone the hard drives on my old machine onto the new machine's
drives, but I have run into trouble before trying to use a boot drive or
copy thereof from an old machine on a different machine. How can I do
this more easily?

I know I can re-install all the apps and then copy all my data from
backup, but is there a faster way?

Thanks

-GECKO
Click to expand...

True. I think you could network the 2 PCs so data is available to both
machines, then you can copy over whatever you or simply share. The
problem occurs when you need to execute programs on the old machine on
the new machine. Many programs install components to C:\windows and c:
\program files so identification would be tricky and reinstallation safer.

Another alternative is to install the HD from the old PC into the new
PC. It would show up as another partition or drive, like D:\ However,
there may still be problems with applications which install to c:\windows
or c:\program files.
 
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