my sons old computer

I started this in the chill room with the same title and now i am looking for advice:
I have my "old" desktop set up just the way i like it and was wondering what would happen if i clone that HHD to my new Computer hard drive.
The old is a dell purchased as a refurbished from E-Bay. what should i expect in terms of booting up and running it. will windows find the new hardware?
any inside would be appreciated.
Thanks

It might boot, but the longer term issue is how well it would work in the hours or months after that.

Standard advice is to not do that and to instead do a clean install of Windows to the new PC, followed by reinstallation of your programs. That's usually a major pain, so you get to decide if it's at least worth a chance to clone.

Can you provide FULL details of the new hardware?

What version and build of Windows is the old PC running? Transferring (say) Win 10 onto a new machine simply may not work- driver issues.
At some point that will start to happen in some cases- it's a possible risk.

IF the old PC is legacy BIOS, rather than UEFI, that's not possible in the way you describe.

However, there IS a way to achieve what you want.

1. Clean install Windows on the new PC.
2. Install Easeus ToDo PCTrans on the new PC.
3. Create a clone of your old PC disk onto a USB disk
4. Attach the cloned disk to the new PC.
5. Run Easeus ToDo PCTrans.
6. You can then transfer installed programs and more to the new PC.

(Note: Easeus ToDo PCTrans normally has a 1 year license - I used a giveaway version - periodically given away).

7. The program can transfer accounts, settings and data as well.


You could synch settings etc with both signed in to the same MS account, for example.
However, if the old build is Win 10 and the new is Win 11, I could not comment on the advisability of synching settings etc as there may be some incompatibilities.

Note: the program offers other ways to transfer data- I found the above the easiest

@Sven1458


Looking at your OLD topic... I don't think it would be a good idea to clone the drive from the computer you have listed in your specs, to the old computer you got from your son.
They are wildly different computers.

I would probably do a clean install of Win 11 on the computer you receive from your son.

If needed, you can grab a working Win 11 key from Stack Social for $12.97

Don't make issues for yourself. Do yourself a favor and start over clean.

Your old Dell computer is probably an Intel
Your new Ryzen 9 is an AMD
Different families, different drivers etc

Another vote for a Clean install
Install same version (Home or Pro) your son used to have on it and it will activate.

Sven1458 said:

I started this in the chill room with the same title and now i am looking for advice:
I have my "old" desktop set up just the way i like it and was wondering what would happen if i clone that HHD to my new Computer hard drive.
The old is a dell purchased as a refurbished from E-Bay. what should i expect in terms of booting up and running it. will windows find the new hardware?
any inside would be appreciated.
Thanks

Click to expand...

you can also find the product that is already being used on your son's computer

as stated above if you install the same Windows version that is already installed
be it Windows Pro or Home, it should auto activate
but if you have a copy of the Windows product you can register the system manually, if required.

best of luck Steve ..

thanks for all the advice, i guess i do a new install because i don't want problems
Thanks again

Sven1458 said:

thanks for all the advice, i guess i do a new install because i don't want problems
Thanks again

Click to expand...

If you want to install with a LOCAL account, take special note of step #15




Motherboard drivers...