The files came over. The email's sorted. You'd think that's the hard part behind you.

Then you go to print a boarding pass and the printer isn't there. You try to log into your bank and the password you never actually knew, the one the browser always filled in for you, is gone. You open the app you use every day and it wants a license key you last saw in 2021.

This is the long tail of moving to a new computer, and it's the reason the whole thing feels like it drags on for weeks. Not one big problem. A dozen small ones, spread out, each one landing at the worst possible moment. Here's the checklist so they don't.

Saved passwords

Your passwords are probably in your browser, and they're trapped in whichever browser you were using. Chrome passwords live in Chrome, Edge passwords live in Edge. They do not automatically appear on the new machine just because you signed into Windows.

If you use a Google account in Chrome or a Microsoft account in Edge and you sign into that same account on the new computer, most of them come across. If you don't, they stay on the old machine. Either way, check before you retire it. Sign into a few important accounts on the new computer and see whether the password fills in. The ones that don't, you'll need to reset while you still have the old machine to look them up on.

This is also the moment a lot of people realize they don't actually know any of their passwords, the browser has just been doing it for them for years. If that's you, it's worth setting up a proper password manager so they live somewhere real instead of locked inside one browser. I wrote about that in what a password manager is and whether you should use one.

Bookmarks and your browser

Your bookmarks, your saved sites, your autofill, the little pile of tabs you keep meaning to read, all of that is browser stuff, and all of it moves the same way the passwords do. Sign into the browser's own account (Google for Chrome, Microsoft for Edge, a Firefox account for Firefox) on the new machine and it syncs down. Skip that and you're rebuilding it by hand.

Pick your browser first, sign in, let it settle. It carries more than you'd guess.

Printers and scanners

A printer isn't a file. It doesn't move. The new computer has never met it, and it needs the software to talk to it.

Most of the time this is easy. Modern printers, especially anything wireless, get found and set up in a couple of minutes. Sometimes it isn't, and it's almost always an older printer, one that still works fine but that nobody's written new software for in years. That's worth finding out now, on a calm afternoon, not the morning you need to print something that matters. Same goes for a scanner. If the printer's just being stubborn in general, five printer fixes to try first covers the usual suspects.

Licenses and product keys

Programs get reinstalled on a new computer, they don't copy over. And the paid ones want proof you bought them: a license key, a product key, or a login to the account you bought it under.

Track those down while the old computer still turns on. Some are in a confirmation email from when you bought it. Some are stored inside the program itself. Some are on a sticker. The point is to have them in hand before you wipe the old machine, because "I'll find it later" turns into buying it a second time.

2FA

Save this one for last because it's the hardest. Two-factor authentication.

If you protect your email or your bank with a code, and that code comes from an app on your phone (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Authy), think about what happens when the phone changes too, which it often does at the same time as the computer. Those codes don't move themselves. Set up a new phone, and the authenticator app starts empty. Now you're trying to log into your email on the new computer, it asks for a code, and the app that makes the code is gone.

That's not an inconvenience. That's locked out of your own accounts, sometimes badly enough that getting back in takes days.

So before you wipe the old phone or the old computer, go into each account that uses an authenticator and move it over deliberately. Most of them have a "move to a new phone" or "add a device" option built for exactly this. Do it on purpose, one account at a time, while both devices still work. If two-factor itself is fuzzy, I explained it here: the extra lock on your account.

That's the list. Print it, work down it, and the new machine stops surprising you. Stuck on any one of these? Most of them are a fifteen minute remote session, and I'd rather sort it in fifteen minutes than after you're locked out. Book one here.

Mike
PCRescue | Portland, ME