Upgrading from Z400 to Z440

[KrazyGuy001]

• Hi, How can I move from Z400 to Z440 keeping all the software and data intact. I am running windows 10 pro. latest version.

Thanks.

[BeemerBiker]

I would clone the boot drive and then put the cloned drive into the z440.  Both systems have intel components.   Move any adapter such as video boards, USB3, WIFI, etc at same time to make it easier for the system to recover.

I was reassembling a pair of system and mistakenly used the boot drive from a Dell 7010 on my Pro 3400 and managed  to get it to boot correctly.  It do not remember if it needed to be activated.

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+clone+software+recommended+by+microsoft

[SDH]

The above advice is worth a try. You may not know that the Z440 (ZX40 family) is one of the first to have a HP Cloud Recovery Tool option where you can enter your serial number and download an older Windows 10 HP installer that includes all the preferred HP drivers. Then you can upgrade from there to the latest W10 from that via Windows Update. That works only if your Z440 was originally "branded" for Windows. There will be a Windows sticker (see below) on the backplane of the case, and also a tiny indication of Windows as the original OS on one of the stickers on the case bottom... most if not all of these started with W7Pro64 and could be updated for no cost to W10Pro64.

If you're lucky the UUID of the motherboard of the Z440 will already have been registered with the Microsoft W10 registration servers and the clone from your Z400 W10 build will auto-check with those servers and your motherboard will then auto-W10 Pro 64 activate from  your W10 Z400 clone build. However...

There can be issues with this clone approach. For example, one of my Z440 builds that was upgraded from W7Pro64 to W10Pro64 dragged along (or installed) older Storage Controllers drivers (seen via Device Manager) that will blue screen crash if I try to use a Z Turbo Drive. Works fine with a SSD, however. I finally tracked the issue to those older drivers. A clean install from the downloaded HP W10 Cloud Recovery USB drive puts on a later version of the Storage Controllers drivers which do allow cloning from the SSD build over to a ZTD and I get normal boot instead.

So, honestly, a clean install and reload is probably the wise thing to do. My time spent on figuring out that issue was greater than a clean install/reload would have been and I still have not fixed the issue. It runs fine from a SSD, however.

Caveat: If you buy a used Z440 and it was not branded for a Windows install (i.e. Linux from the factory) then the Cloud Recovery Tool approach won't work for you out of the box. There are workarounds for that issue, however, that I can help you with if you need. Easier to just make sure there is that Windows icon sticker on the back:

[KrazyGuy001]

Thanks for your quick responce. I tried this but it didnt work. So I made an Acronis backup of the old PC, then installed clean windows 10 pro on a new HDD, installed Acronis on it, made a backup and imported the backup of the old pc. This worked for me. Windows opened as expected with all softwares and settings intact.

Now when I went to detect my PC from HP website it gives me the model and serial of old pc HP Z400, not the new one which is HP Z440. So I cannot auto detect my drivers or softwares from HP website. I am able to download and install manually without any issue.

I have been dealing with this for almost 3 weeks, ultimately gave up. Now who cares weather HP detects older PC or newer one as far as all my softwares are working perfectly.

[KrazyGuy001]

Thanks for your quick responce. I tried this but it didnt work. So I made an Acronis backup of the old PC, then installed clean windows 10 pro on a new HDD, installed Acronis on it, made a backup and imported the backup of the old pc. This worked for me. Windows opened as expected with all softwares and settings intact.

Now when I went to detect my PC from HP website it gives me the model and serial of old pc HP Z400, not the new one which is HP Z440. So I cannot auto detect my drivers or softwares from HP website. I am able to download and install manually without any issue.

I have been dealing with this for almost 3 weeks, ultimately gave up. Now who cares weather HP detects older PC or newer one as far as all my softwares are working perfectly.

I think I have to search all my softwares their product ID nad reload windows from scratch. It will be a pain as I have almost 6 HDD to search for the softwares which I have backed up. This will take a long time which I was planning to save.

Thanks all who tried their best.

[KrazyGuy001]

Thanks again, unfortunatly I have formated the old HDD and clean installed windows 10 on my old PC.