shifting from Intel Mac to apple silicon. What do I do to update windows to ARM, etc

Question

I am preparing to transition from an Intel Mac to apple silicon. I plan to largely build the Mac fresh rather than transfer users. Obviously iCloud will sync. But aside from that, I'll install everything fresh. What does this mean for parallels and my VM? I admit I don't understand the windows/microsoft way of doing things. I know that my current windows 10 home won't work on ARM. But I can't seem to google a straightforward answer on how to transition from windows 10x86 to windows 10/11 ARM. Will parallels do that for me using my existing windows product key? Also, I understand that my parallels virtual machine won't transfer from one to the other. But I can just install Paratext fresh and sign into the project and everything should be normal, right? What about my layouts, etc? Are they somehow stored on my account or can I otherwise (this is Mac speak) copy the preference files from one machine to the other? Is that a thing in windows? All I have on the VM is Paratext; I don't use it for anything else, so It's not a huge loss to start fresh.

Answer 1

I can't give you complete instructions, but it's pretty straightforward, and Parallels should enable you to get a version of Windows 11 for ARM, which I did more than a year ago when I bought a new iMac. I was transitioning from VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro, so my approach was to set up the new VM as a completely new computer.

I'm not sure what the approved way to do things is, but you could simply copy the whole folder C:\My Paratext 9 Projects onto a flash drive and then onto the new VM. The subfolder _WindowCollections contains your layouts, so you could just copy that folder if needed. If you have a decent Internet connection, then downloading all your projects and resources will be simple enough.

John

Comments

Very helpful. Thank you. One question. Did you have to purchase a new windows license or how does that work?

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Yes, I needed to buy a new Windows license. I had one on for the MBP, but I'd originally set it up as 32-bit, and Microsoft wouldn't let me reinstall it as 64-bit, so I figured that they wouldn't allow me to install it on a different computer either.

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Thank you very much. Extremely helpful.

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For the sake of completeness, the transfer was flawless. Parallels did a fantastic job of making the process smooth. 10/10. Thanks for your help as well.