My DAW is old and tired. The USB ports are failing quickly with slow transfer speeds. A new PC is arriving soon. My PC is only 5 years old but was on always during that time. I’m rethinking that strategy. I’m not willing to pay $300 for a 5 year old mobo to buy more time.
What tips are good for getting the license moved and the apps installed?
I downloaded the license and application manager applications to get ready for the move.
How easy will this be?
KA
Cubase License: just deactivate the license on the old computer in the Steinberg Activation Manager.
Then install the Steinberg Download Manager on the new system, install Cubase and activate the license again in the Activation Manager.
That should so it. I wouldn’t hurt to check if you have third party plugins installed on your old system, sometimes those need to be deactivated, too (best example e.g. iLok with Machine Authorization. Very important to deactivate the old system).
you might want to check out this for backing up all Cubase preferences and settings files and restoring them on your new system
My advice is to get a mac on the way instead of a pc.
To add to the things @fese said you might want to make a list of the 3rd party plugins you have installed on your current system. Maybe make a list based on your plugin manager.
Also, have a look at presets related to these 3rd party plugins:
If you have saved them as an internal *vstpreset then you’ll find them here:
C:\Users\username\Documents\VST3 Presets\
If you have saved them as specific 3rdparty presets (e.g. *json) then have a look here:
C:\Users\username\Documents\
There are other locations, too. But these locations will prove most fruitful.
Lorem ipsum[
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LOL, well “put” @Googly_Shakespeare 
My button was well and truly pushed.
May I be the first to wish every one a very Merry Christmas.
2026.
(edit)
In case my post was too subtle, here is a wiki entry - the key words are “nonsensical” and “improper”:
Merry Xmas to you, too @Googly_Shakespeare 
And no, it wasn’t too subtle. I knew what it meant…
That’s the reason why I wrote “put” as in putting down letters in order to be mechanically printed.
In the words of Sam Pepys: And so, to bed.
if you prefer PC, i suggest getting AOMEI Backupper. Back up your entire system. I’ve used AOMEI a couple of times to transfer my existing entire DAW and OS to a new motherboard without much hiccups. License-wise, this is why I still prefer iLok - because your licenses aren’t at the mercy of being attached to your current motherboard hardware. For licenses that aren’t iLok-based, it will still be a pain in the ass to re-register them on your new hardware.
Or this:
There’s one major downside if you do a backup of the entire current system - you will also transfer all bloated files and folderss which have grown over the years, too. If you take an early backup of the entire system you might not have all presets/settings that have evolved over the years.
Either way, it’s a case by case decision. You got to find the way that serves your needs best.
Oh, definitely. Bloat goes along with it. But over the years I’ve weighed the pros and cons of a “everything is where I need it to be” VS “getting rid of bloat” - I usually end up sticking with the first one, hehe. You can get rid of bloat while everything is needed to be - but you can’t do the opposite.
Thanks everyone. I did check out Mac Mini, hoping the new hardware version was released. It is not yet out. I saw a great price but only 24Mg of memory on the current version. I hear the new one will be incredible.
Googly_Smythe I have no clue what you are attempting to communicate. Hope your holiday was Merry!
KA
I found using the USB 2 port in my USB C hub transfers data faster than using the USB 2 port directly. Don’t know why. May be useful for you.
Samuel Pepys - famous (at least I thought he was) diarist of 17th century London. He used to end his daily entries with “And so to bed”, meaning, he went to bed. As I did after that post.
Here endeth the history lesson!
I also get mightily pssd off when someone says “I want a PC!” and some chimes in with “Buy a Mac!”.
Ah well, start the New Year as you mean to carry on, that’s what I says.
Things went very easy getting downloads and authorizations for my DAW rebuild. This new hardware solved some issues I was having and I have yet to discover any new issues. The eLicense folks did a fantastic job.
Before I did anything else, I went to YouTube and searched for installing a local account in Win11. It took just seconds to find and bypass the now forced MS on-line account.
That search lead me here after I had a local only desktop:
This was the second most important task I performed prior to installing software. There must be thousands of similar post. This just happened to be the one I chose. It turned out to be quite good. I was able to drastically reduce MS background processes and also external data connections.
I have always wanted to play VSTi drums in real time but latency was always an issue. Prior to this new build I always fell short. While they could get down to 10 mS I still had pops in the audio. The combination of the new hardware and an optimized system seems to be popless at 5 mS. Finally I can work with sample based drums in real time.
Most of those tweak/disable videos are largely BS and don’t actually help anything. The majority of the people with these kinds of videos never truly test performance before and after the changes.
For example, he completely misrepresents “delivery optimization”. You can even see that by the setting in the screenshot. If you have other family members or PCs in your house, on your network, this ultimately saves you bandwidth when using the default settings. Whether or not that is important to you is up to you.
Another is the optional features. Most of that is already turned off, despite his talking points.
Most PCs don’t have hibernate, or that file, active or allocated.
If you’re using a local account, OneDrive will not be active.
Background App Permissions are for Store/UWP apps only. They almost never result in a performance improvement, despite what Grumpy Sysadmin is claiming, especially because there are so few apps like this on the typical PC install. What background app permissions allow includes things like URL handling, notifications (if enabled for that app) etc. So I recommend only doing this if you find a particular app which seems to be troublesome.
As for widgets, personalized recommendations, etc. Sure, all good recommendations if you do not want those.
So a few reasonable directions in there, almost none of which change PC performance, and all of which he has hyped up to sound far more intrusive than they actually are. The blatant misinformation makes it sound like you have to go through all these steps to make a PC usable, all because they want more video clicks.
Pete
Microsoft
Ain’t it the truth!!
There are many of the optimization videos and I just picked one. I’m not endorsing any poster, just the concept of optimization. I did a minimum check prior and post. His guide significantly reduced the number of background processes and the number of external data connections. I am now able to finally use a VSTi drum module with only 5 mS in latency in real time with no pops! I changed many variables and can’t specify which change HW or SW improved this latency. My goal was achieved.
Since we have you on the line, can you provide a DAW optimization guide for folks who ONLY use the DAW for music. That would be very helpful to the community. I decided not to install any applications such as Office. I’m able to use the old PC for that.
He left out some other changes such as uninstalling all non-DAW applications. I started with One Drive and CoPilot.
As a retired IT professional I DO NOT WANT ANY DATA LEAVING MY PC WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT PERMISSION. I wish they offered a privacy mode installation. MS should not be allowed to spy on folks without permission and make revenue from it. I worked in the USPTO in the Virtual Machine Art unit. My proudest day was rejecting a MS Data Center Orchestra patent application due to MS posting prior art describing their ideas. MS wasted years of my life with their crap. So, this is a sensitive topic and I have the scars to prove it.
I do not trust MS for good reason, such as obtaining HIPPA data from DHHS client PCs with help from Chrome! I reported this to the FBI, but they seem to turn a blind eye to these crimes.
Please please provide a DAW optimization thread for us all. Nothing personal.
Thank you and sincere respect,
KA