Bootcamp Partition to new Mac?

[MitchellMck]

Hey guys,

I'm currently running an activated Windows 7 partition on my MacBook and I'm upgrading to a new MBP when they release. I just wondering, if I were to back up my windows partition with winclone and restore it on my new MBP, will it still be activated and I won't have to go buy another product key?

Thanks

 

[balamw]

Generally, no.

Windows is not portable and Winclone is not designed to do this.

You might be able to use sysprep to facilitate this, but you are on your own.

No matter what, you will have to reactivate due to the changes in hardware so you gain very little over installing fresh on the new box.

(Even if you have an OEM copy, you should generally be able to install and activate it on your new machine by calling MS even though the license doesn't allow you to.)

B

 

[MitchellMck]

Ahh thanks man. Will they give me a new product key easy enough or will I have to do some explaining?

 

[balamw]

Ahh thanks man. Will they give me a new product key easy enough or will I have to do some explaining?

Use the same product key, but they'll give you a separate activation key if it fails via the automatic tool.

This is why I tell people to stay away from OEM the "savings" are not worth the hassle. If you do buy another license, buy retail upgrade and use that instead. Both are equally "off license" for end users (if you don't have a valid license to upgrade from), but retail upgrade is transferrable without issue.

B

 

[MitchellMck]

Ahh okay, was gonna go with the OEM edition then realised I may encounter some problems so glad I went with the retail!

Thanks again man I appreciate the help

 

[sportster]

I have a simular question...

I'm getting ready to upgrade my hard drive in my iMac (to a 2tb), I have XP running via Bootcamp on a 34gb partition on my old 320gb drive. Can I clone/copy my bootcamp partition to a usb drive, then after my new drive install make a new partition and re clone XP back?

If so, what is a good (free) drive cloner? And, how would I remake the XP Bootcamp partition with out going through the whole process again.

 

[balamw]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/471301/

Winclone 2.2 still (generally) works fine as long as you turn off compression and use DMG image format.

If you are friendly with the command line, you can do everything Winclone does with NTFSProgs. http://www.arekdreyer.com/articles/precompiled-binaries-for-ntfsprogs Winclone just gives you a GUI and handles a bit of book keeping for you.

B