In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:
On 22/11/2016 15:25, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Go on then. You are in the OP's position. Which programme you have
currently could and would you just copy from the old HD to the new?

Lol. Newsgroups eh. GIYF. The term 'portable' is often applied, often
not.

Thanks for not answering the question.

I personally can't think of any.

There are a fair number of simple portable utilities that can be freely
copied between machines and will work OK from a USB stick without being
installed (eg CPUZ) but these days almost everything serious wants to be
installed and will react badly if it doesn't find the right keys in the
registry to indicate that you have actually paid for it.

Quite. Like PhotoShop and so on. The sort of prog which you can copy
across freely can also be downloaded again for free. So hardly worth the
effort of copying.

One really annoying thing when migrating from an old machine and wanting
to retain access to a particular version of Office for testing purposes
is that you must know the digital signature keys from the original
packaging. Not being able to find that can be very annoying.

I'm quite meticulous about keeping the details of things I've paid good
money for. But even things like the free Open Office won't allow you to
copy it over.

Fortunately one or two programmes exist to recover keys for installed
payware so that you can move them to another PC when the old one is
retired or expires. Some are tetchy about video or ethernet card
upgrades and mistakenly believe that they are not on the original PC.

Yes - although it's usually not a problem to get Windows reactivated if it
thinks you've moved it. Provided it is your own bought copy. Dunno about
the pre-loaded versions.

Recoverkeys has worked very well for me in the past when migrating on
Windows machines where original packaging has been lost. YMMV

--
*Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.