Transferring Applications from Laptop SSD to a New PC Build

tickle_me_emo

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 30, 2006
Messages
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I'm going to preface by saying this is for my friend believe me or not.

My friend's laptop is showing it's age working from home. I told him I'd help him build a new PC, if he wanted to go that route. He took me up on my offer. We have all the parts, we're going to build it this Friday. I planned on installing his applications from scratch for a clean install and transfer over various documents. However he wants to keep his Adobe CS 6 software, but "lost the key." He's not interested in the cloud version.

I did some googling before posting here, this is what i've figured out

1) Imaging won't work right? It's completely new hardware (going from a 2.5" sdd to nvme sdd) and it ruins having a clean install.
2) There's a third party program PC Mover, but 25% of the Amazon review say it didn't work for them. Normally Amazon reviews are worthless, but this seems hard to ignore. Also it's $40, and you can only use it on one PC, seems kind of lame.
3) Figure out "a way" to get CS 6. I haven't done that since Limewire/kazaa, so he's on his own figuring that out.
4) Have a dual boot option, where he can boot windows from his 2.5" sdd to get access to his CS 6. That seems like a poor quality of life option, and i'd imagine we'd have to get a new windows license for the 2.5 " ssd? Also removing the 2.5" sdd from the laptop, puts it out of commission unless he gets another windows key (i have old spare drives I can give him).
5) Am I an idiot and missed something super simple?

What would you recommend to get Adobe CS 6 on the new PC?

Thanks.
 
I guess you could try rsync'ing it over, but I don't know how well it works with fat/ntfs.

Here's what I followed under linux. Unfortunately, I expect the commands and directories you'd want to exclude will be different under Windows. And there may be some other gatcha's you'd have to look out for. Probably better if you look for windows specific instructions.
 
Imaging can work, it works most of the time with Windows 10 since it is very good with major hardware changes.
I do it all the time.
 
I'm going to preface by saying this is for my friend believe me or not.

My friend's laptop is showing it's age working from home. I told him I'd help him build a new PC, if he wanted to go that route. He took me up on my offer. We have all the parts, we're going to build it this Friday. I planned on installing his applications from scratch for a clean install and transfer over various documents. However he wants to keep his Adobe CS 6 software, but "lost the key." He's not interested in the cloud version.

I did some googling before posting here, this is what i've figured out

1) Imaging won't work right? It's completely new hardware (going from a 2.5" sdd to nvme sdd) and it ruins having a clean install.
2) There's a third party program PC Mover, but 25% of the Amazon review say it didn't work for them. Normally Amazon reviews are worthless, but this seems hard to ignore. Also it's $40, and you can only use it on one PC, seems kind of lame.
3) Figure out "a way" to get CS 6. I haven't done that since Limewire/kazaa, so he's on his own figuring that out.
4) Have a dual boot option, where he can boot windows from his 2.5" sdd to get access to his CS 6. That seems like a poor quality of life option, and i'd imagine we'd have to get a new windows license for the 2.5 " ssd? Also removing the 2.5" sdd from the laptop, puts it out of commission unless he gets another windows key (i have old spare drives I can give him).
5) Am I an idiot and missed something super simple?

What would you recommend to get Adobe CS 6 on the new PC?

Thanks.
He doesn't need a new windows license if he already has one. The key is tied to the hardware signature so it will work even with the cloned OS as long as you re-key it.
 
You could try License Crawler to retrieve the actual license. I did this with my old win 7 machine on a new install of 10. I needed to get the license key for Office 2010.
 
You could image the hard drive and install the drivers for all the new hardware component to the imaged hard drive. Just know you'll have a lot of useless files and software installed.
 
clone it to the towers new drive and toss it in, there is a good chance it will fire up, need to reboot a couple times and then work fine. then turf the old drivers and put in the new ones. if youre going ssd/hdd to ssd, put it in the laptop first and remove the drivers then toss it in the tower.
 
Thanks for your help guys, I spent sometime looking into cloning the hdd. However I should have done more research as my friend didn't even know they had windows 8. That seemed too hard to figure out how to make work, so I did a fresh windows 10 install and we got the software by "other" means.

None of the parts arrived dead (he has similar parts as in my sig, expect his budget only allowed a 2060ko). I just hope none of his passwords get stolen.
 
Heh I hope your friend can return the 2060 since you can now get a 3xxx series that is twice as fast for the same price.
 
Heh I hope your friend can return the 2060 since you can now get a 3xxx series that is twice as fast for the same price.
He probably didn't need a 2060, he doesn't game. But he wanted to spend that much on a GPU. :rolleyes: He needed to get this PC before his child is born in a month. He couldn't really wait for a 3070. And I doubt the price/availibility would be on his side anyways, since he has to pull the trigger as he's not as online as I am.
 
He probably didn't need a 2060, he doesn't game. But he wanted to spend that much on a GPU. :rolleyes: He needed to get this PC before his child is born in a month. He couldn't really wait for a 3070. And I doubt the price/availibility would be on his side anyways, since he has to pull the trigger as he's not as online as I am.
If he's a friend, talk some sense into him... especially with child coming it's nuts to spend money to something he gets no use of.
 
Heh I hope your friend can return the 2060 since you MAY SOON get a 3xxx series that is twice as fast for the same price.
Fixed. They are not in stock, and we don't know the street price or availability yet. We also don't know what the stuff below a 3070 will look like at all, and $500 is way more than a 2060KO..
 
Fixed. They are not in stock, and we don't know the street price or availability yet. We also don't know what the stuff below a 3070 will look like at all, and $500 is way more than a 2060KO..
It seems that the new architecture is way faster so similar speed increases are expected for the lower models... I wouldn't touch the 2xxx series at this point.
 
It seems that the new architecture is way faster so similar speed increases are expected for the lower models... I wouldn't touch the 2xxx series at this point.
When a customer says, build me a PC, you don't tell them to wait. We don't know how much stock will be available, or when a 3060 will be released, it's vaporware. We also don't know if Ampere will be problem free, new process, new arch, new fabricator.
 
When a customer says, build me a PC, you don't tell them to wait. We don't know how much stock will be available, or when a 3060 will be released, it's vaporware. We also don't know if Ampere will be problem free, new process, new arch, new fabricator.
I thought it was supposed to be a friend with a baby coming... A 2xxx series is a seriously bad investment at the moment. Especially if he doesn't actually need a gaming card.
 
I thought it was supposed to be a friend with a baby coming... A 2xxx series is a seriously bad investment at the moment. Especially if he doesn't actually need a gaming card.
The person said they want the PC nowm regardless of a baby coming. We don't the persons financial situation, they may have plenty to spare, but need to build now due to other factors. I tend not ot judge how people wish to spend their money. The best value right now is the 2060KO, for 1080/1440p gaming, and can be more productive in encoding than iGPUs.
 
I'm going to preface by saying this is for my friend believe me or not.

My friend's laptop is showing it's age working from home. I told him I'd help him build a new PC, if he wanted to go that route. He took me up on my offer. We have all the parts, we're going to build it this Friday. I planned on installing his applications from scratch for a clean install and transfer over various documents. However he wants to keep his Adobe CS 6 software, but "lost the key." He's not interested in the cloud version.

I did some googling before posting here, this is what i've figured out

1) Imaging won't work right? It's completely new hardware (going from a 2.5" sdd to nvme sdd) and it ruins having a clean install.
2) There's a third party program PC Mover, but 25% of the Amazon review say it didn't work for them. Normally Amazon reviews are worthless, but this seems hard to ignore. Also it's $40, and you can only use it on one PC, seems kind of lame.
3) Figure out "a way" to get CS 6. I haven't done that since Limewire/kazaa, so he's on his own figuring that out.
4) Have a dual boot option, where he can boot windows from his 2.5" sdd to get access to his CS 6. That seems like a poor quality of life option, and i'd imagine we'd have to get a new windows license for the 2.5 " ssd? Also removing the 2.5" sdd from the laptop, puts it out of commission unless he gets another windows key (i have old spare drives I can give him).
5) Am I an idiot and missed something super simple?

What would you recommend to get Adobe CS 6 on the new PC?

Thanks.
I recommend a lot of patience with Adobe, and be prepared for the usual clueless "help" people. I rebuilt my main rig a few months ago with a new AMD ASUS x570 motherboard/3900X CPU/RAM. Reused the case, PSU, drives, and even the old vid card. (I'm waiting for nVidia 3000 upgrade.) And whaddya know. My Adobe CS 6 programs stopped working. Thanks to Adobe support, I went through countless uninstalls and re-installs, but each time Acrobat insisted that it was not licensed. Without Adobe's suggestion, I ended up having to use Adobe's deep cleaner, which I ran 3 times, and then I did a fresh install which worked. Complete waste of my time.

The only other programs that need to be relicensed was MS Office, and that all went pretty quickly.
 
If he's a friend, talk some sense into him... especially with child coming it's nuts to spend money to something he gets no use of.
He might start gaming who knows what's going to happen as a new dad, he likes the sports games. But his setup was ~8 years old. He's probably not going to upgrade in years, so it's "future proofing." He might start using the rendering portion of the 2060ko as a side hustle gig in this shit economy.
 
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