Win7 to Win10 migration

[bluarcher]

I have been running Win7 Home Premium on a HP Pavilion laptop for the past 5 yrs. With the end of support for 7 coming, I have elected to buy a good condition Win10 laptop and transfer all that I can onto it when it gets here. I've looked into the transfer software like Laplink and/or PC Mover or PC Mover Pro but I have this question: If my whole Win7 system is backed up on an external hard drive already using the EZ Backup software, what's stopping me from installing that software onto the Win 10 computer and transferring all my files (or basically everything except the Win7 o.s.itself) to the Win10 machine? Maybe that's not even a legitimate idea but I thought I'd run it by the forum. If I need the transfer software, I'll invest in it.
Thanks in advance.

 

[zipper]

I've moved my apps just mostly copying as I always try to install into another partition than the operating system. Most programs do run, some must be reinstalled like Photoshop. I've used PC Mover from Vista to Win7, it was pretty OK but tedious using an external drive for temporary storage - and slow! From Win8.1 to Win10 I just copied the contents of my E: drive to a similar one; I prefer portable apps if ever possible. My games are on an external HDD which I can swap between different machines.

 

[TrainableMan]

Because of extra things the program may need such as registry settings and DLL libraries, etc plus things it installs that you may want or need such as desktop icons, start menu icons, or context menu options when you right-click it is usually best to reinstall the programs.

Smaller programs, like utility programs, that don't need extra libraries or registry settings should be fine without a reinstall.

So … like zipper said … try it. If it works and has all you need then great; if not then simply reinstall it over the same directory so that the extra things it needs are created correctly.