By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted July 2016
Now is the perfect time to move your computer from an old Windows system to the new Windows 10 Operating System. Windows 10 was release nearly a year ago and over the past months, it has been used by millions of users. Early bugs in the code have been found and corrected. Today, Windows 10 is a mature and stable operating system and the system of the future. In the past few weeks, I have successfully moved all of my computer systems to the Windows 10 base. It is an excellent operating system and one that all computer users should depend on.
In this article, we will cover the two ways that you have to move your computer to a Windows 10 base and give you the steps needed to successfully complete this process:
1- If you have a fairly new computer hardware system, you should consider upgrading your current Windows system to the new Windows 10 system. To make this approach attractive, Microsoft is offering a free upgrade for all Win7 and Win8/8.1 users. Be aware that this free upgrade expires July 29, 2016, so don’t put this off much longer.
2- If your computer is older, then you may want to buy a new computer with Windows 10 already installed on it. In this case, you will want to move your important files from your old computer and get them to run on your new Windows 10 computer. How to do this is very different than the Windows 10 Upgrade approach.
We will give you detailed steps to follow to accomplish either of these two approaches you select. Follow these steps carefully and the move to Windows 10 should be easy to do.
Upgrading Older Computer to Windows 10
Most users that have a computer they bought in the past 4-5 years will find that it is probably powerful enough to handle the new Windows 10 operating system. These newer computers should have Win7 or Win8/8.1 installed on them. These computers may take advantage of the Microsoft offer to do a free upgrade of these systems to Windows 10. Microsoft has place a free upgrade notice on these eligible computers and have probably been asking to upgrade over the past months. This free upgrade announcement is shown as a small Windows icon in the lower right corner of your computer. Click on it to find out more about your Win10 upgrade.
The following steps should be followed to upgrade your old Windows system to the new Windows 10 operating system:
1- Cleanup your old computer before the move. Spend some time running various cleanup tools on your old computer to empty the useless junk from your computer. Windows has a cleanup tool and other utility software can also do this for you.
2- Scan your computer for any viruses or Registry errors to strengthen your computer system. Several free software products will do an good job of finding this bad stuff and removing it. I use CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and SuperAntiSpyware as well as a few others.
3- With your old computer now clean of junk and malware, you should run a defrag utility to physically move all of your files near each other. This will speed up the performance of your new upgraded system.
4- The last step before you start the upgrade is to use the current Acronis True Image 2016 backup utility to backup your entire main hard drive onto an external hard drive. This is a safety precaution in case the upgrade to Windows 10 does not go as planned. You can always use your full backup to restore your computer the way it was before the upgrade.
5- You are now ready to run the upgrade to Windows 10. This is fairly straight forward and easy to do. It will start to download Windows 10 to your computer. Hopefully, you are using a very fast broadband internet connection and that you are connected via a cable to your router. A Wireless connection is much slower and will make the download unbearably long. Just be aware that this step will take over an hour to complete, so leave plenty of time to complete this download.
6- Once the download finishes, the installation will go fairly fast. Plan on at least 15 to 30 minutes to do the install after the download. Your system may reboot a few times as Windows 10 installs. In the 5-6 upgrades I have done, this ran fairly clean and should complete successfully with Windows 10 running on your old computer.
7- Check out your computer with Windows 10 installed. You should find that most of your software and files are available where you had them on the older Windows system. Most of your programs should work fine. You may find one or two programs that need to be upgraded to run on Windows 10. Also, most of your hardware devices attached to your computer should also run under Windows 10. Some older printers or scanners may need new device drivers to work with Windows 10. In general, 90% of your computer should run under Windows 10 just fine after the upgrade.
Moving Files from Older Computer to new Windows 10 Computer
If you’re using a computer you bought over 5 years ago, it is probably too old to properly handle Windows 10. Much has changed in the past several years and today’s computer hardware is much more capable than a few years ago. On the other hand, the price of computer hardware has dropped dramatically in the past several years. Today, you can buy a new computer that will run rings around your old computer for just a few hundred dollars. You may not need to replace your display or printers when you replace your main computer, so those costs will not add to your expense. The new computer will certainly come with the latest Windows 10 operating system. So, your main concerns will be to move your application programs and data files from your old computer to your new computer.
Unfortunately, a lot of users think that all they need to do is to backup their old computer and then restore it on their new computer system. Backup software does not work that way. It was designed to backup one computer and then restore it back to the same computer if it fails. It was never designed to migrate the contents of one computer to a new computer. This process takes a system migration utility and not a backup utility. However, you can get many of your files from the old computer to the new computer with the aid of a backup utility like Acronis True Image 2016.
Here are the steps you need to take to migrate your application programs and data files to your new Windows 10 computer:
1- Your new computer is already running clean and efficiently. So, you do not need to spend time cleaning up your old computer. This will save you lots of time.
2- Make a full backup image with Acronis True Image 2016 of your entire main hard drive of your old computer. You will use this later to move your important data files to your new computer.
3- Attach all of the devices you plan to use on your new computer. Make sure you find and install the appropriate device drivers that match your hardware and the Win10 operating system.
4- Then, run a full image backup of your new computer with Acronis True Image 2016 before you start to move stuff from your old computer to the new computer. That way, you will be able to return your new computer back to its fresh new status, if the migration from the old computer fails.
5- Application programs on your old computer will need to be installed again on your new computer. You will need the original CD or download of the application and the serial number to install it on your new computer. A few of your older applications may not work on Win10, so you may have to upgrade to a newer version of the application. Make sure you install Acronis True Image 2016 on your new computer as it will be needed later in moving your data files to the new computer. Select just those applications that you use all of the time to migrate to your new computer. Leave the seldom used applications on the old system. Migrate them later only if you have an unexpected need for them on your new computer.
6- Once you get all of your most used applications on your new computer, I would suggest you do another full image backup of your main hard drive on your new computer. This will give you another time slice that you can return your computer to if needed.
7- Before moving all of your important data files on your new computer, you may want to consider setting up a separate data partition on your new computer. I describe this approach on my website at www.ugr7.com under Articles. Look for the title, “Backup Data and Program Files Separately”. It is near the top of the list of articles I provide. You will need our Acronis Disk Director 12 product to setup this separate data partition.
8- Attach your external hard drive that contains the full backup of your old computer to your new computer. Then use the Win10 File Explorer (use to be called Windows Explorer on older Windows systems) to look at the contents of your backup external hard drive. Find the backup image containing your most recent backup of your old computer. Double click on this image name to open it and expand it to show all of your files and folders. Drill down till you find your data files. Then, either copy and paste these files to your new computer’s hard drive or drag and drop these files instead.
9- Once you have all of your data files moved to your new computer, you should make another full image backup of your new computer’s main hard drive. This will be the starting point of your ongoing backups of your new computer with Acronis True Image 2016.
Those are the two ways to move to Windows 10 on either your old computer or a new Win10 computer you buy.
To order Acronis True Image 2016 for PC/Mac, Acronis True Image 2016 Cloud or Acronis Disk Director 12 from us, go to www.ugr7.com and click on the Order Now button near the top of the page to place your order. We charge only $25 for a single license or less for a three license package of our software products. That is half what these excellent product normally sells for from Acronis or from your retail computer store. With the Acronis True Image 2016 Cloud product, you get a license to our popular backup utility plus unlimited Cloud storage for one year to be used by one computer and up to 3 smart devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.). The cost of this True Image Cloud package is only $50, again half the normal price of this product. Not only do we provide the best prices for these excellent products, we also give our customers much better support than they will get from Acronis or other distributers.
If you have questions about this article or the Acronis True Image for PC/Mac, Acronis True Image Cloud or Acronis Disk Director products, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.
User Group Relations
Copyrighted July 2016
Now is the perfect time to move your computer from an old Windows system to the new Windows 10 Operating System. Windows 10 was release nearly a year ago and over the past months, it has been used by millions of users. Early bugs in the code have been found and corrected. Today, Windows 10 is a mature and stable operating system and the system of the future. In the past few weeks, I have successfully moved all of my computer systems to the Windows 10 base. It is an excellent operating system and one that all computer users should depend on.
In this article, we will cover the two ways that you have to move your computer to a Windows 10 base and give you the steps needed to successfully complete this process:
1- If you have a fairly new computer hardware system, you should consider upgrading your current Windows system to the new Windows 10 system. To make this approach attractive, Microsoft is offering a free upgrade for all Win7 and Win8/8.1 users. Be aware that this free upgrade expires July 29, 2016, so don’t put this off much longer.
2- If your computer is older, then you may want to buy a new computer with Windows 10 already installed on it. In this case, you will want to move your important files from your old computer and get them to run on your new Windows 10 computer. How to do this is very different than the Windows 10 Upgrade approach.
We will give you detailed steps to follow to accomplish either of these two approaches you select. Follow these steps carefully and the move to Windows 10 should be easy to do.
Upgrading Older Computer to Windows 10
Most users that have a computer they bought in the past 4-5 years will find that it is probably powerful enough to handle the new Windows 10 operating system. These newer computers should have Win7 or Win8/8.1 installed on them. These computers may take advantage of the Microsoft offer to do a free upgrade of these systems to Windows 10. Microsoft has place a free upgrade notice on these eligible computers and have probably been asking to upgrade over the past months. This free upgrade announcement is shown as a small Windows icon in the lower right corner of your computer. Click on it to find out more about your Win10 upgrade.
The following steps should be followed to upgrade your old Windows system to the new Windows 10 operating system:
1- Cleanup your old computer before the move. Spend some time running various cleanup tools on your old computer to empty the useless junk from your computer. Windows has a cleanup tool and other utility software can also do this for you.
2- Scan your computer for any viruses or Registry errors to strengthen your computer system. Several free software products will do an good job of finding this bad stuff and removing it. I use CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and SuperAntiSpyware as well as a few others.
3- With your old computer now clean of junk and malware, you should run a defrag utility to physically move all of your files near each other. This will speed up the performance of your new upgraded system.
4- The last step before you start the upgrade is to use the current Acronis True Image 2016 backup utility to backup your entire main hard drive onto an external hard drive. This is a safety precaution in case the upgrade to Windows 10 does not go as planned. You can always use your full backup to restore your computer the way it was before the upgrade.
5- You are now ready to run the upgrade to Windows 10. This is fairly straight forward and easy to do. It will start to download Windows 10 to your computer. Hopefully, you are using a very fast broadband internet connection and that you are connected via a cable to your router. A Wireless connection is much slower and will make the download unbearably long. Just be aware that this step will take over an hour to complete, so leave plenty of time to complete this download.
6- Once the download finishes, the installation will go fairly fast. Plan on at least 15 to 30 minutes to do the install after the download. Your system may reboot a few times as Windows 10 installs. In the 5-6 upgrades I have done, this ran fairly clean and should complete successfully with Windows 10 running on your old computer.
7- Check out your computer with Windows 10 installed. You should find that most of your software and files are available where you had them on the older Windows system. Most of your programs should work fine. You may find one or two programs that need to be upgraded to run on Windows 10. Also, most of your hardware devices attached to your computer should also run under Windows 10. Some older printers or scanners may need new device drivers to work with Windows 10. In general, 90% of your computer should run under Windows 10 just fine after the upgrade.
Moving Files from Older Computer to new Windows 10 Computer
If you’re using a computer you bought over 5 years ago, it is probably too old to properly handle Windows 10. Much has changed in the past several years and today’s computer hardware is much more capable than a few years ago. On the other hand, the price of computer hardware has dropped dramatically in the past several years. Today, you can buy a new computer that will run rings around your old computer for just a few hundred dollars. You may not need to replace your display or printers when you replace your main computer, so those costs will not add to your expense. The new computer will certainly come with the latest Windows 10 operating system. So, your main concerns will be to move your application programs and data files from your old computer to your new computer.
Unfortunately, a lot of users think that all they need to do is to backup their old computer and then restore it on their new computer system. Backup software does not work that way. It was designed to backup one computer and then restore it back to the same computer if it fails. It was never designed to migrate the contents of one computer to a new computer. This process takes a system migration utility and not a backup utility. However, you can get many of your files from the old computer to the new computer with the aid of a backup utility like Acronis True Image 2016.
Here are the steps you need to take to migrate your application programs and data files to your new Windows 10 computer:
1- Your new computer is already running clean and efficiently. So, you do not need to spend time cleaning up your old computer. This will save you lots of time.
2- Make a full backup image with Acronis True Image 2016 of your entire main hard drive of your old computer. You will use this later to move your important data files to your new computer.
3- Attach all of the devices you plan to use on your new computer. Make sure you find and install the appropriate device drivers that match your hardware and the Win10 operating system.
4- Then, run a full image backup of your new computer with Acronis True Image 2016 before you start to move stuff from your old computer to the new computer. That way, you will be able to return your new computer back to its fresh new status, if the migration from the old computer fails.
5- Application programs on your old computer will need to be installed again on your new computer. You will need the original CD or download of the application and the serial number to install it on your new computer. A few of your older applications may not work on Win10, so you may have to upgrade to a newer version of the application. Make sure you install Acronis True Image 2016 on your new computer as it will be needed later in moving your data files to the new computer. Select just those applications that you use all of the time to migrate to your new computer. Leave the seldom used applications on the old system. Migrate them later only if you have an unexpected need for them on your new computer.
6- Once you get all of your most used applications on your new computer, I would suggest you do another full image backup of your main hard drive on your new computer. This will give you another time slice that you can return your computer to if needed.
7- Before moving all of your important data files on your new computer, you may want to consider setting up a separate data partition on your new computer. I describe this approach on my website at www.ugr7.com under Articles. Look for the title, “Backup Data and Program Files Separately”. It is near the top of the list of articles I provide. You will need our Acronis Disk Director 12 product to setup this separate data partition.
8- Attach your external hard drive that contains the full backup of your old computer to your new computer. Then use the Win10 File Explorer (use to be called Windows Explorer on older Windows systems) to look at the contents of your backup external hard drive. Find the backup image containing your most recent backup of your old computer. Double click on this image name to open it and expand it to show all of your files and folders. Drill down till you find your data files. Then, either copy and paste these files to your new computer’s hard drive or drag and drop these files instead.
9- Once you have all of your data files moved to your new computer, you should make another full image backup of your new computer’s main hard drive. This will be the starting point of your ongoing backups of your new computer with Acronis True Image 2016.
Those are the two ways to move to Windows 10 on either your old computer or a new Win10 computer you buy.
To order Acronis True Image 2016 for PC/Mac, Acronis True Image 2016 Cloud or Acronis Disk Director 12 from us, go to www.ugr7.com and click on the Order Now button near the top of the page to place your order. We charge only $25 for a single license or less for a three license package of our software products. That is half what these excellent product normally sells for from Acronis or from your retail computer store. With the Acronis True Image 2016 Cloud product, you get a license to our popular backup utility plus unlimited Cloud storage for one year to be used by one computer and up to 3 smart devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.). The cost of this True Image Cloud package is only $50, again half the normal price of this product. Not only do we provide the best prices for these excellent products, we also give our customers much better support than they will get from Acronis or other distributers.
If you have questions about this article or the Acronis True Image for PC/Mac, Acronis True Image Cloud or Acronis Disk Director products, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.