Will HDD out of current PC work ok in new system?

A_Lert

As far as Windows goes, the officially supported way to do this is to sysprep the drive. The "generalize" option removes computer-specific settings and resets certain ID numbers Windows has.

Make a full backup of the drive first, in case the specialist software invalidates its license due to the sysprep process.

Once the install is sysprep generalized, you can either physically move the drive, or take a disk image and restore that image to the new PC.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/sysprep--generalize--a-windows-installation

In your case you might not need to sysprep because this will only be one PC. It's most important if you're taking one disk image and applying it to multiple PCs; without sysprep generalize all the computers will get the same SID number which breaks things.

jsmith9

If worst comes to worst, and the HDD boots in the new PC but is not activated they you can buy a new W10 key and use that to activate .

Regarding the app - you may be lucky in that the whole of the app is just installed in c:\windows\progra files\xxx and you can simply copy that folder to eg a usb stick and then onto your new PC. However,  some apps scatter files over the whole system.

Also, if this is such an important app, then  image the HDD and keep the image self in case you have a drive failure in the future.

CoastingHatbox

I think it is likely that transferring the disk to a new computer, especially as it is brand new and the original computer the disk was in was quite old, will lead to a few problems with drivers; or lack there of for the new machine.

Really best, as other have suggested, to clone the disk to a new one and then put the new one into the new PC. You might get lucky and find it just works. Or it works if you can get the new machine to boot in the same mode as the old machine (BIOS/UEFI). You will also need to, if possible, set the SATA mode to be the same (IDE/AHCI/RAID).

If it doesn't work, you can probably get it to do so, but you will probably find yourself having to boot the machine into a WinPE or recovery environment in order to add the right drivers and then hack the registry, so that Windows is loading those drivers.

It might be better to cleanly install Windows on the new machine and add the old disk as a second disk. You can replicate all of the files that the software uses from the old disk to the new disk. If the software relies on registry entries, you will need to add those too. You can probably export them by loading the old registry hive and then import them into the new machines registry hive. You can use something like Sysinternal's Process Monitor (procmon) with the software running on the old PC to profile it and determine what files and registry keys it is accessing.

You might get lucky and find that it is not using the registry at all. Hopefully that USB dongle doesn't need any special drivers - if so, then you will probably have that to contend with as well. I've come across proprietary software that relies on a smart card + USB smart card reader and special drivers to ensure the user is authenticated to use the software. A right royal pain in the proverbial!

Jumblebumble

Brian_Pamo said:

Hi all

I have a PC that has pretty unique software on it. The software itself was very expensive when we bought it. Now, the software is out of its support period and the company want over £300 to give us the latest version which is a waste of money considering that I am happy with the software. So, I have built a new PC and I literally want to take the HDD (that has the software on it) out of the current PC and put it in the new PC however I’m sure I read somewhere years ago that this is not recommended because the HDD somehow knows the hardware of the machine it is/was in and this causes a problem. What I mean to say is can I take a HDD out of a 10 year PC and transplant it into a new PC allowing it to work without any problems or will I encounter problems because the HDD is set up to recognise the hardware (MB, BIOS etc) from the older PC? 

Windows 10 is very much better at coping with different hardware than previous versions.
As other posters have said clone the drive using macrium and see what happens.
Another option is to find an IT  professional who can sell you one month of storagecraft MSP or has the IT version  and use that as it is pretty good at independent hardware restore
https://www.storagecraft.com/uk/products/shadowprotect-it-edition

I am not convinced there would be any advantage at all in using Sysprep.

DiddyDavies

Brian_Pamo said:

There never was installation files. The software was originally installed on 4 PC’s by an employee of the software company who actually visited our place of work. 

In which case, there may well be a legal issue with transferring the program to another computer if it's specifically registered to the old one.