I used a lot of backup sw, I think that they have mostly the same basic features, I now stick to Paragon Manager, it has both delta (I use this) and incremental.

I tested hardware deployment, but from virtual to real, with little or no success (and it was expected).
Instead, for dissimilar hw restore /deployment (providing destination drivers) I'm sure that Macrium does that. But of course the ID change is not easily circumvented.

You can, however, modify an original windows .iso to include the destination hw drivers. I've done that with several tools, like Double Driver, Dism, Aio maker pro, Gimagex.

It does not change much from a standard windows installation except all destination 3th party drivers are already installed, so no hassle.

 

this requires 3rd party bootloader provided by Acronis, so not as convenient as just booting Windows directly, that's what I meant,
about hardware ID change on MacOS, only issue I've noticed so far is Microsoft Office and Waves, nothing else

 

Direct clone to similar hardware works while working in windows as superduper and ccc. Never tried the other road

 

will/can w10 use the win7 or win8 chipset drivers if there are none for win 10

 

It depends.
Basically you don't have to rely on drivers compatibility and hope that any win7 driver will work, but it could, to some extent.
You can use Double driver, backup all 3th party drivers from win7 and after installing win10 restore them and check.
It worked for me but from XP to Win7 for an old laptop.

@jhagen
did you try something? did you get some result?
I'm not going to write down a tedious and time consuming procedure if you're not interested anymore in double boot.

 

Thanks a lot Orbitbooster for your help and collaboration.
I came to the conclusion that what I need for now is just a clone, so I can swap it if anything happen to my win7 and to preserve the latest win updates too.
I will use clonezilla that I like because is open source, there are plenty of detailed tutorials on how to use clonizilla, it looks not really intuitive but I feel I can do it.

Sorry not to tell you before. Yes, no need to write down a guide for a proper dual boot.
I give up installing win10 until some software I need will not run anymore on win7 because of unsupported OS, unfortunately I know this will happen soon or later.

I want to thanks everyone posting here for so much info. thanks guys.

 

Ok. Keep in mind that the System reserved partitions of both win7 and win10 could lead to some trouble after restoring process if you don't clone the OS properly.

 

this year is big HDD diying year here. 3 HDD's from 2009 started to fail !

 

At the moment I will keep Win7 only and don't install Win10 at all, until I really need it.

My real concern is to have a clone to use if something happen, I usually reinstall everything but soon no more updates available.

I've notice my HDD have a small empty "healthy (recovery partition)" of 10GB, could it lead to the troubles you mentioned when cloning (using clonezilla)?

 

It's probably a hidden partition that contains the whole default factory OS. There should be a boot key (let's say F10, F2, or whatever) that allows you to restore it.

In past they used to attach with the PC an installation DVD or CD with factory OS.

 

500GB 860 EVO SSD from 2018 died here, got a new piece because warranty service had to accept failure

 

[offtopic]
some time ago i instaleld zonealarm, then i completely removed it.
Yesterday I wanted to install Windows Firewall Control, but it shows a warning that ZoneAlarm is still installed.
I used teh zonealarm clean tool and manually searched through the registry, no luck. Even their support have no clue how to fix.,
THIS is exactly what I hate about windows. Sometimes stuff happens which you cant repair or only very hard. Windows still works but such stuff stinks
So any of you have a clue how to fix that sh**[/offtopic]

 

I would go the laziest way, buying a Samsung SSD that comes with its cloning software. Take out the old drive and put it into an USB enclosure or keep it inside the desktop pc if there is a spare space and SATA connection.
Dual boot can be configured in BIOS.

 

First try to stop these services:

Code:

ZoneAlarm requires all of the following services to be installed and running.

Disabling, Stopping or Removing any of the following may put your PC at risk to be hacked, or make ZoneAlarm and or your PC unstable.

AKSA.EXE

ZATRAY.EXE

ICM-SERVICE.EXE

ANTITHEFT.EXE

VSMON.EXE

ZAPRIVACYSERVICE.EXE

THREATEMULATION.EXE

EFRService

RemediationService

TESvc

SBACipollaSrvHost

ZAARUpdateService

AkSVC

Then search and delete all entries for "zonealarm" and all its services with Nirsoft Regscanner.

 

A curious Hackintosh user here... I'd like to know why you won't upgrade to Windows 10? Is it the drivers or the way it handles audio or hardware support? I don't get it - well I kinda get it, that's why I use macOS for music production and Windows for installing firmware on my android devices ;) But still: I wonder why people who produce music with windows are so reluctant to upgrade to windows 10 though...

 

None of ethe services are running.

Regscanner returrn the following when i search for zonealarm :

 

disassemble the installer and find out what it checks to determine such condition maybe? just guessing, there are some registry for (msi) installer states which usually don't contain software name, just strings of random numbers - finding them manually will take longer than fresh Windows 10 reinstall though....

or maybe try Glasswire instead, it works well as behavior-based firewall for individual applications and processes

 

Because 4+ yrs in, it has undergone numerous updates and Win10 still sucks. Too much bloat man, from mildly useless sht to down right evil lol. Takes much more tweaking than Win7 to work properly, seasoned pc & daw users will opt for a modified Win10 pro lite version (no store, no telemetry, no cortana etc) from the get go and disable updates indefinitely, unless of course there is a new feat that daw/plugs can benefit from.

 

Last edited: Dec 10, 2019

I installed it already logging with revo uninstaller , and removed all installed stuff, but there must be still something remaining wherever

hm maybe ? but installing, customizing and registering all stuff might take even longer

as I said, anything is working (even WFC) besides getting that notice. It is more about that I want to know how to fix such stuff. Being unable to fix stuff makes me ... well... nervous :D

 

I used to use Acronis cracked, but I recently started using Macrium Reflect Free, just because it it truly free and I heard a lot of good things about it. Has worked nicely too.