New Computer Help

Sirfredrickrex

Solid State Member
Messages
6
Location
USA
HI there. I recently went out and got a new laptop, and I wanted to take everything; and I mean everything from my old laptop and put it onto the new one. I'm posting here because my old laptop went kaput on me and the only thing I have is a backup I made roughly two years ago on an external drive.

I was wondering if anybody could help me out with this process or point me in the direction of some reliable literature I could take a look at to enlighten myself.

I'll continue searching what's already here, but am posting in the event somebody could help me figure it out sooner. Trying to keep it short, so any help is appreciated and thanks in advance.
 
Your options might depend upon just how "kaput" your old machine is. If you can still boot your old laptop, perhaps using something like Windows Easy Transfer is an option. It offers a fairly straight forward way to move your important documents and settings to a new computer.

If you can't boot the PC, then you might just want to pull the hard drive and use a hard drive dock to access data on the drive. Then you can manually copy over your files to the new computer.

As for programs, you'll just want to install those again on the new computer.
 
I believe I can still boot it. As of now the only problem SEEMS to be the screen. But I have only had a couple of tech acquainted friends look at it. I haven't taken it anywhere though I do intend to do so. I will definitely look into "Windows Easy Transfer" and also int a hard drive dock(don't know what that is but I can guess) as well as removal of my hard drive.

The programs shouldn't be anything but time consuming.

What is the possibility of installing Windows 7 on it? I'm not familiar with 10 and would like to continue working off of 7 until I can get better acquainted.

Also, thanks for the response.
 
The issue you might encounter if you try to install Win 7 on that machine is finding Win 7 drivers for a laptop that was designed for Win 10. Go to the laptop mfrs website and check to see if they provide Win 7 drivers. If they do, download them to a USB thumbdrive so you'll have them for when you install Win 7. Of course you'll also need a Win 7 install disk and valid product key.

I personally have never used Windows Easy Transfer since I feel it's simpler to just copy the files I want from the old to the new over the network or using an external dock like crazyman143 suggested. I think Easy Transfer also copies settings and such which I don't care about. However, lots of people use and like it.

Another reason why I don't use Easy Transfer is because I keep very little data on the local machine. I have a server where I keep all my pictures, music, videos, documents, etc... so any machine I connect to my network has access to them. Additionally, any files I wish to have available on all machines are saved in DropBox which automatically syncs them to all my computers.
 
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hi if your new laptop has space you could install the old hd in the laptop, possibly instead of the DVD. This will enable you to choose which OS you want


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I am like Strollin and have never touched Windows Easy Transfer. All my files are stored on my portable HDD. Depending on the model of laptop and licence it may have downgrade rights which essentially means that you can activate Windows 7 Pro for example if it has Windows 8.1 Pro pre-installed then the manufacturer may have drivers for Windows 7.
 
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