Running Windows 7 with my DAW and plugins etc. Not much else on the system, its strictly DAW only.

Anyway my laptop is a few years old now and pretty under powered, 1GB RAM and some bog standard processor

I wanna get a new machine but Im not looking forward to the agro of "missing samples" when loading old projects on it, or synths in projects restarting at "init".

Is there a stright forward method to duplicate my current system and "install" it on a new PC?

I think I would have to reinstall plugins again anyway because they are written to the registry (I have no idea what Im talking about ) but is there a whole lot more to it?

Thanks in advance cos Im sure some whizz will blow me away when they answer

 

Yes, but......

You will need to create/save an image of your hard drive (includes the MBR - Master Boot Record), and then install that onto you new puter's hard drive. The problem then will be your new puter will have different BIOS software/hardware/settings which as you have guessed, windows registry will have problems dealing with. Manually installing the new puter drivers should (hopefully) overcome this.

 

Dafuq is the problem?

* Get the hard drive out of your system
* Trash your old system
* Buy a new one
* Put old hard drive into new system
* That's it!

I did it with WinXP 8 times (!!!) and no problems occured! When Windows started, it detected new hardware, and for some you need a driver, which should be shipped with your hardware. Install, 2-3 reboots, and you're done.
I did it with Win7 3 times so far. Also no problems.


Or better: Clone your old hard drive to a new one.

1st: You have a backup of your old system
2nd: New hard drive will be faster for sure

 

XP could easily be moved to any machine. Sometimes just needed a trick with removing HDD controler info from registry. I don't think such trick would work with 7 though and BSOD is much likely you would see after. Though if you switch to the same cpu manufacturer the chance is it may work. So never switch AMD <> Intel but use the same as you had before.

 

Nothing is impossible. Just rumors...

The only thing you're right with is, that if you installed your OS with IDE or AHCI, the new system should have enabled the same setting in BIOS, otherwise your system won't boot. But it's nothing related to your controller, CPU manufacturer or whatever.

By the way, in case of problems:
Boot windows in safe mode (F8 before windows logo) and no drivers are loaded. Then you're able to install all necessary drivers for a normal boot.

 

BSOD?
IDE?
AHCI?



Looks like Im gonna have to do things the sloooooooooooooooow way. Thanks for the input but a lot of this went over my head! Also the incompatibility issues are scaring me.

I manually "cloned" my system before, took DAYS of *click* *click* *click* but at least Im comfortable with the slow method.

Thanks again!

 

http://clonezilla.org/

That is what I for system backups


XP was great at being moved ( Corporate XP Key version)

If the hardware is too different you may encounter issues "You may" moving other OS's
around.

 

Just switched from AMD to Intel.. After installing new drivers all was set to go, with Windows 7.

To say something for the initial question.. for beginner disc cloning isn't that easy with every possible option that could go wrong with it.. do you have friends that could help you with it? Basically it's really good option to continue where you left off with everything set the way they were. Specially if you have massive amount of stuff installed.

 

create an image with acronis true image,save it on an external drive,then create a bootable media disk ,insert it in your new pc,plug the external drive in,and import the image in your new computer

 

bigboobs got it right