You can choose from Easy Transfer Cable, a Network, or an external hard disk or USB flash drive: Once you start it, the Welcome dialog will pop up and give you an overview of what items you can transfer:Ĭlick Next and then choose the method you want to use to transfer between the old PC and Windows 8. To start, we will open Easy Transfer on the old machine, in my case Windows 7. In Windows 7, just search for Easy Transfer and you’ll see it show up: Note that it says it’s for transferring from XP or Vista to Windows 7, but you can use it to transfer to Windows 8 also. If you are running Windows 7 or 8, it’s already there and you can just search for it. Note that if you are doing an upgrade, think of the old machine as the old version of Windows, in this case Windows XP, Vista, or 7.Īlso, note that if you are upgrading Windows XP or Vista, you will need to download and install Windows Easy Transfer as it does not come with the program built-in. To get started, you need to open Windows Easy Transfer on your old PC or the PC that is running Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8. Simply uncompress the folder and run migwiz.exe. It can import a 32-bit version of an Easy Transfer file. If you have 32-bit Windows 7, run the preinstalled 32-bit version on the Windows 7 machine, but download the 64-bit version on Windows 10. If you do not have access to a Windows 7 64-bit machine, I copied the folder and zipped it up, which you can download from here. However, if you have a Windows 7 64-bit machine, you can copy over the folder that contains the Windows Easy Transfer program to a USB stick and then run it on Windows 10 and it works just fine. Now, if you try to download the Vista version and run it on Windows 10, it gives you an error. If you are using Windows XP or Vista, you can download the appropriate version from here: Basically, the Windows Easy Transfer program is already installed on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Luckily, there is a way to get around this problem.

Microsoft has removed Windows Easy Transfer from Windows 10 and now suggests some third-party program PCmover Express, which costs money! There is no way I’m paying any money just to transfer some data from one PC to another. Windows Easy Transfer on Windows 10īefore we get started, there is one big issue we have to deal with. You will have to reinstall any programs that you want on your new Windows 10 PC.

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