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I'm going to be ordering a new W10 laptop tomorrow (Alienware 15 R4) and I want to know what the fastest, most painless method of transferring applications, data, and user settings (especially things like wifi settings and installed applications) from my current laptop (Asus G752), which is also running Windows 10. My concern is mainly everything on my C: drive (<128GB on my current laptop, going into a 256GB C: drive in my new laptop) because that holds my most important installed applications. I anticipate I can simply take my other storage drive and drop it straight into the new machine without much issue so that isn't as much of a concern for me.

I don't really see a way to migrate your applications to the new SSD/computer without reinstalling them, unless they're all portable programs. You can't just copy+paste and installed application, as installing an application usually means changes to the registry and creation of program-specific folders in various windows locations. Technically you could make these changes manually on the new machine, but it's FAR easier to just reinstall. Your best bet is to download the installers all ahead of time onto a USB or other storage device so you have them ready to install as soon as the computer is set up. Certain applications might have exportable settings files that you can use to backup any relevant settings, keybinds, etc. but that's unlikely for most programs. I'm not knowledgeable enough about windows networking to know if you can backup and export any of those settings.

In the past, Windows had a built in feature called Windows Easy Transfer which was able to move your programs, documents, settings, etc to a new computer, but it isn't available in Windows 10 anymore. Microsoft partnered with Laplink and "recommends" the $15 PCmover express instead (http://pcmover-10.laplink.com/). There are other similar utilities out there such as those listed on this page (http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/06/technology/windows10-transfer-files-pc/index.html), but they all cost money. I can't seem to find a free version. PCmover express was free for a little while but that is no longer the case. Hopefully someone else will have a better option for you.

Mebbe try this one?

https://www.forensit.com/downloads.html

The profile wizard tool will migrate your profile.
I'd do some careful reading on it first since I've never used it....
And yes it is free...

You can still use Windows Easy Transfer to migrate from the old PC to the new one. I use it frequently to do just that on customer PCs. What you need to do is copy the MigWiz folder onto the new PC from the Windows 7 PC, then just launch it on the old PC, start the migration wizard and specify the machine as the 'old' computer. Launch it from the copied folder on the new PC and away you go - it will even transfer over the network between the two devices. I also recommend running it from a thumb drive, so it gains portability from PC to PC, as opposed to copying it to the new PC. Link giving some details on the process is given below:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-easy-transfer-from-7-to-10/af892c88-ea3a-42c6-a8c6-b6b617648a7d?page=1

I was really ticked that MS decided to remove this utility. It provided a valuable service, and for the life of me I cannot fathom why MS chose to remove it.

Walkintarget wrote:

You can still use Windows Easy Transfer to migrate from the old PC to the new one. I use it frequently to do just that on customer PCs. What you need to do is copy the MigWiz folder onto the new PC from the Windows 7 PC, then just launch it on the old PC, start the migration wizard and specify the machine as the 'old' computer. Launch it from the copied folder on the new PC and away you go - it will even transfer over the network between the two devices. I also recommend running it from a thumb drive, so it gains portability from PC to PC, as opposed to copying it to the new PC. Link giving some details on the process is given below:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-easy-transfer-from-7-to-10/af892c88-ea3a-42c6-a8c6-b6b617648a7d?page=1

I was really ticked that MS decided to remove this utility. It provided a valuable service, and for the life of me I cannot fathom why MS chose to remove it.

M$ chose to remove it so that they could partner with Laplink's paid program "PCmover express". Obviously a financially driven move, and possibly also a space saving measure to help reduce the Win10 install size. Every little bit helps, I guess?

If you're logged into a Microsoft account on both machines, and both are updated to the latest W10 release, some general things like Desktop theme and WiFi settings should transfer automatically.

While you can transfer apps and settings in-place using the methods noted, you'll be better off reinstalling everything rather than bringing all the old cruft into the new machine. May seem easier now but can lead to brain damage in the long run.

As a related example, I have a Win10 laptop that had been upgraded in place a couple times. Recently, it started spawning an instance of WMI Provider Host about 2-3 minutes after bootup which would eat 30% CPU and never go away. (Seems to be a common problem if you search for it on Google.) In the past, this usually meant a recent program had not closed one of its tasks properly, and a reboot would fix it. Nope. I tried several things all the way up to the "Reset My PC" option and that failed midway and rolled itself back. At that point, I wiped it and installed Win10 from the newest-available Microsoft image followed by programs, and it's never run better.