Move existing Windows 7 or 10 installation to new computer?

Question

I have a Windows 7 64-bit installation on my current PC, and I want to move it to a new PC .. I do NOT have a problem with licensing, as the new system already has its own new Windows 7 license, which I intend to use.

I want to use my existing installation, because it has 3 years worth of installed office related software development software, which installing again could take weeks !

I'm assuming that I can use Windows 7's Backup and Restore feature to backup a system image to a network location, then restore that network stored system image on the new PC ?

Again, like I said, I don't have a WIndows 7 licensing issue, as both machines are corporate provided and come with their own licences.

Solution

Short answer: you have to run sysprep on your old PC, shut it down and move the drive to the new PC.

Long answer: Sysprep is one way only and it strips Windows from all hardware drivers, once you run it, you'd have to install drivers on your old PC as well. You need to create a backup of your Windows in case something will go wrong.

Use the following procedure if you have a spare new drive:

1. Clone old drive to the new disk, connected via USB to old PC (use gparted or clonezilla live CD)
2. Swap disks and boot old PC from new drive
3. Ensure you have the product key as Windows 10 may require it after booting in new PC
4. Run sysprep on old PC with new drive, shutdown old PC
5. Put the new drive in new PC, boot and see how and if it works. This way you will still have an untouched old drive that you can still use.

Comments

[Ramhound]

The Windows 7 Back and Restore feature will NOT transfer your applications you would have to reinstall those if you used that option. Acronis True Image and other alternatives has the ability to migrate an image to different hardware. You can do it yourself by putting Windows into a mode, but its not easy, and might simply be worth the small amount of money to do it with speciailized software.

[trpt4him]

Is the hardware the same or different? You may have some driver issues if you just try to do a clone from one hard drive to another, though Win 7 is far better than previous OSes at sorting out hardware changes.

[Ahmad]

I don't mind the occasional driver issues, as long as my software environments run out of the box. @Ramhound, which software are you specifically suggesting which has better migration capabilities ? Acronis True Image ? Will it move the entire Windows 7 installation, including all installed stuff and files, without causing any boot/incompatiblity problems on destination PC ?

[Ahmad]

Also, the hardware is different between the two PCs .. Different motherboard, different CPU (both are Intel though), more RAM, etc ..

[Ramhound]

@Ahmad - Acronis True Image 2014 Premium does have the ability to migrate your Windows installation from PC A to PC B where PC B has entirely different hardware. This of course requires two licenses and for you to manually change the license and reactivate the installation. There are other alternatives that do this, in exactly the same way, Acronis does it. Like I said you can place Windows into a migration mode, duplicate the HDD, and Windows would install the required drivers to boot.

[Kinnectus]

Can't you just 'dd' one disk to the other in your existing PC (so you have the original to fallback to) -> insert the "copy" disk in new PC -> boot the new machine -> sysprep /generalize /reboot -> Install drivers as necessary -> activate Windows with new machine key...? You shouldn't need to buy any software.. a LiveCD should do...?

[trpt4him]

I don't know... if you were trying to grab an image from a disk and ended up messing up that disk, I think you may have done something wrong. I've used Ghost in the past and have never seen it modify the source image like that.

[Mario]

Just used it's "mirror disk" function or whatever it's been called. It tried to add the new disk to the old disk's boot manager for whatever reason.

[Moab]

This is the easiest way to move an existing W7 installation i have ever found, sysprep is built into W7 also, it can be found in C:\Windows\System32\sysprep

[bgmCoder]

I ran sysprep /generalize but I can't get the drive to boot on the new machine; the new drive boots on the old machine but not the new one, not even in safe mode. The processor is different and I'm sure it doesn't have the driver for it. How do I fix it?

[Alec Istomin]

@bgmCoder Does windows start booting and then crashes or boot sequence not even starting?

[bgmCoder]

@AlecIstomin Ah, I ended up doing a fresh install and moving everything manually; took me all night. But yes, windows would start booting and then crash.

[I say Reinstate Monica]

None of these descriptions sound like they'll move an existing installation to a new machine intact. Moving to a new hard drive doesn't count.