[SOLVED] Restore old Windows 7 profile onto new Windows 10 installation

Mar 26, 2020
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Hi,

First a brief history:
  • My old mobo gave up the ghost recently (died) so I bought a new mobo and CPU.
    • ( Old: Asus Z170 Pro4 + i5 6600 -> New: MSI B450 Tomahawk Max + Ryzen 5 2600)
  • Silly me, I was still running Windows 7 (which doesn't support Ryzen I'm told?) - my USB keyboard and mouse were recognised in the BIOS but NOT as soon as Windows loaded - I couldn't get past the login screen (and didn't have access to a PS/2 keyboard to bypass the USB ports).
  • I had Windows 10 so I decided it was finally time to leave Win7 in the past and installed Windows 10.
  • Did a clean Windows install (the installer didn't let me upgrade, gave me an error about how it couldn't upgrade from boot (and I couldn't upgrade from within Windows 7 itself, as I couldn't login) - anyway, as it should, the install completed and left the contents of my old Windows 7 installation in a 'Windows.old' folder on C:, but is otherwise a bare-bones installation.
My question is: rather than reinstall everything from scratch on the new Windows 10 setup, is there any way to port all the old Windows 7 files, programs etc. across to the new Windows 10 installation? Or am I stuck installing everything again manually?
 
Solution
My question is: rather than reinstall everything from scratch on the new Windows 10 setup, is there any way to port all the old Windows 7 files, programs etc. across to the new Windows 10 installation? Or am I stuck installing everything again manually?
No can do.
When an application is installed, it makes dozens, sometimes thousands of entries in the Registry and elsewhere.
Your new Win 10 OS knows nothing about these. And you absolutely cannot overlay a Win 7 reg on top of a Win 10 reg. That simply leads to full non-functionality.

New install of all your applications.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
My question is: rather than reinstall everything from scratch on the new Windows 10 setup, is there any way to port all the old Windows 7 files, programs etc. across to the new Windows 10 installation? Or am I stuck installing everything again manually?
No can do.
When an application is installed, it makes dozens, sometimes thousands of entries in the Registry and elsewhere.
Your new Win 10 OS knows nothing about these. And you absolutely cannot overlay a Win 7 reg on top of a Win 10 reg. That simply leads to full non-functionality.

New install of all your applications.
 
Solution