Can I Use Macrium Reflect to Move Installed Software to a New Machine?

- Can I Use Macrium Reflect to Move Installed Software to a New Machine?

- Browse an Image for Specific Files and Folders

Can I Use Macrium Reflect to Move Installed Software to a New Machine?

This is a question we commonly received, and relates to being able to move an entire application from one system to another, often newer hardware, without imaging and restoring the whole operating system.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to move applications from one Windows operating system to another. When you install a program, not only are application files copied to your computer, but typically the registry is updated, library binaries, services, and drivers are often also installed on your OS. These latter items may be specific to the version of Windows you are running. This makes it impossible to separate the installed applications from the OS into which they are installed.

There are two possible options that can assist when moving data and applications to a new system.

Image and Restore

The simplest method to move applications to a new system is to image the whole operating system and then restore the image to the new hardware (Macrium ReDeploy may be required if you are restoring to dissimilar hardware). However, this will restore the whole operating system, meaning that the new hardware will have the operating system from the old system; this operating system may even be older than the OEM operating system included with the new hardware. This will, however, result in the applications from the old system being present on the new system.

Browse for Specific Files and Folders

If you don't want to overwrite the operating system on the new system, then Macrium Reflect can still streamline the process of moving data from the old system to the new system. Macrium Reflect can be installed on the new system, and the image can be browsed to extract files and folders from the image to the new computer. Applications will still need to be reinstalled on the new system, but this can simplify the process of moving data to the new system.