Guidance Needed after Fried Computer

[TropDayz]

My situation is I purchased Blue Iris in 2020 and maintained support for a few years. I’ve loved the software, used it daily and recommended it to many.

A couple weeks ago my devoted security computer took a surge that fried it - there was no rescuing the computer.

I’ve now purchased another and have pulled the hard drive from the old computer and luckily have access to my Blue Iris files.

I am looking for any guidance as to how to go about reinstalling BI as I have my serial key though I wasn’t able to deactivate it because I couldn’t plan for this. Or will I have to purchase a new copy of the software?

What files will I copy to what folders in order that I won’t have to reset up each of my cameras again? I really want to avoid as much of the setup stuff as I can.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

 

[ludshed]

I’ve been out of touch for a while but last I checked they had made advances with the disk imaging software like acronis to where you could clone a drive and then use it on a different machine. Or you could jump on eBay and just get another main board.

 

[Bruce_H]

I would recommend that you do a clean install,

Most of the camera setting are stored in the windows registry and might be hard to extract unless you know how to access the registry files on the old HD from the new computer, this is assuming the original HD is still functioning.

I believe that if you put the original key in the software, it will work just fine, the only thing that you have to watch is the version of BI you install must be from before your support expired, or you could just renew your support and use a current version.

 

[TropDayz]

Thanks for the input.

I was able to extract the hard drive from the old computer and from what I can tell all of the BI files are intact. I assumed there was a folder that contained my camera setup files, I’m assuming it’s not going to be that easy?

I definitely don’t mind restarting support.

I have already purchased a new machine and am just looking for the best way to get back to get back to where I was as painlessly as possible.

 

[Bruce_H]

How many cameras did you have on your old system that will determine if trying this process is worth the trouble

The camera setting are found in the registry of the old computer at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perspective Software\Blue Iris\Cameras\
Have you ever used the windows registry editor "REGEDIT", if not then this may be over your head!
There is a way to attach the registry files from the old drive if you install it in the new computer and then you can export the settings.
You should do a google search on how to load a "Registry Hive" to see if this is over your head!

A word of warning, if you open the registry editor you can do significant damage to your new system if you accidentally delete something or change something as there is no undo function, changes happen instantly!

 

[bp2008]

I think Blue Iris makes registry backups automatically in its program directory. Unless that was off on your system. If the backups exist that will be the easiest thing to import to get the configuration back.

Like @Bruce_H said, you can load the registry from the old hard drive and export the Blue Iris registry settings from it that way, but if I recall I think anything you export from a registry that way has the wrong path in all the keys and you'd need to do a find and replace operation to fix them. Not really a process meant to be done by someone who doesn't know their way around the registry.

Another option would be to boot off the old disk if possible so that you boot fully into the old Windows installation, and export Blue Iris's settings from there. Again, it may not be entirely straightforward.

 

[bp2008]

Also yes, the original license key is the one you need to use to reactivate. If Blue Iris refuses to activate and says the key has been used too many times, you can contact Blue Iris support via email and ask them to reset it.