melismus Loc: Chesapeake Bay Country

In the days of DOS it was easy, and people "borrowed" programs from each other. Microsoft invented the registry to forestall that.

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

I use Acronis to back up my SSD by cloning it. I wouldn’t clone an older drive to a new drive because if something went wrong in the process, you’d have nothing to revert back to.
I did swap a cloned drive into my Dell 8900 when I bought it but you have to contact Microsoft and tell them what you did so Windows 10 will work legitimately.
You might have to reregister, and unregister some programs because you’d be installing a 3rd copy when you’re only allowed 2...in some instances.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I had my computer (Win 7) tell me that my primary hard drive had a pending failure.
I used Acronis to copy the drive image (clone) to a new drive, replaced the old drive with the newly cloned drive. Worked flawlessly. (Cloning does nothing to the old drive.)

G. Crook Loc: Linden, TX

Just purchased a new iMac 21”. Using a cable I copied everything from my 2 year old MacBook Pro to the iMac in about two hours. The only app not copied was my 2012 (?) Windows Office. It did copy all of the Windows files, however.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

I had Acronis at one time but found their manual to be confusing. Maybe it was my computer illiteracy. I just find it easier to backup using the DOS Command. Then I know where everything is. It would be nice to be able to backup the whold drive, but I didn't figure that out and wasn't confident a restoration would work.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

It already exists in the Mac world. A new mac will migrate apps from an old Mac to a new one without difficulty.

tuatara Loc: Orig. NZ - currently SF area

I keep ALL my data on an external source, external HD or cloud, mostly One Drive. Reinstalling programmes I find simple enough but a bit time consuming, although it gives you a chance to clean away all the "I'll check this out" programmes that you never end up using.
Get a new computer>install required software> connect to data source> ready to go

MikeJ Loc: North Georgia USA

"...every radio, TV and wifi for two blocks picks it up, birds get dizzy and people's garage doors open."

Ever hear about the guy who got his vasectomy at Sears? Every time he has an erection, his garage door flies open.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

MikeJ -
First please use 'Quote Reply' when responding so we have an idea of what in the heck this totally unrelated and seemingly mindless idiocy is regarding.
Yours truly,

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

If you are doing Mac, you could use Time Machine to back up your Mac to an external hard drive or SSD druve. Then use the contents to transfer back.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

I still use Ghost. As a tinkerer and tester of computers, it is invaluable to me. It is the only imaging-cloning program that can take an image made from a hard drive and put it on a different-size hard drive, with no effort or tricks, automatically re-sizing to fit the new drive, bigger or smaller. It is indispensable. I have the last updated version there was for it, which makes it fully Windows 10 compatible. I use it all the time.

But it IS NOT a means to migrate just installed programs from one Windows to Windows on another computer. Never was. It is for capturing an image (or doing disk-to-disk cloning) of an entire hard drive or partition and cloning it to another drive.

I found years ago when first working with Macs, that there's a big difference compared to Windows in this area. On Macs, some/many/but not all installed applications can just be copied from one OS installation to another, since the app is ENTIRELY SELF CONTAINED in the program's folder.

Not so simple (mostly) with Windows, where a program installation puts registry keys, files etc. all over the place. Just copying a program folder from computer to computer does not get all the required components. And different versions of Windows do it differently. But there ARE some simple Windows programs that are entirely self-contained in their program folder.

This is why you should absolutely expect to have to reinstall all applications from scratch into a fresh Windows installation, and you should keep program install media forever. Or else you won't fully recover from a hard drive disaster.

Paul J. Svetlik Loc: Colorado

Not to mention the situation, when your older programs will not be possible to upload on the new computer?
Then you have a choice:
To buy new versions of your older programs ($10 000) ...
or ... take a sledgehammer.

woodworkerman Loc: PA to FL

Citrix Software developed this Ghosting program at least 13 or 14 years ago. Organizations, like colleges, for example, create the image on one computer of all the software they can legally copy to their host of machines. Then those computers receive the image with all the software as part of it. I first observed their software in use at a conference I attended, and subsequently my organization purchased their software and has been using it (regularly updated) ever since. However, I don't know pricing nor availability for individual computers.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Yep. I've seen numerous letters to the computer advice column in my local newspaper from people who have been using a computer for years, possibly one acquired from someone else and using it as is, and are wondering what to do about "their" programs when the computer needs to be wiped and reinstalled.
The answer is...."No media, no available download, don't want to pay for the program......tough luck! find replacement programs!"

carl hervol Loc: jacksonville florida

When I bought a new PC i just took the old one with me to the Microsoft store they did it for me got it back the next day no charge .