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TRANSFERRING FROM AN OLD PC TO A NEW ONE - being developed
It has taken me days to transfer everything from my old machine to the new one. So here are a few tips which might help people about to do the same thing.
1) As far as possible, providing you can connect the new machine to the net, Vista attemps to set up peripherals such as printers and scanners for you, either because it contains the drivers locally or by looking for them on the manufacturer's sites. So, if you can make the first job to connect to the net this will help. Some equipment will not be recognised, especially old or unusual items. You may have to go to the manufacturer's site and try to find Vista compatible software. Some software will not run or run well under software. It is a question of trying to install it and testing it thoroughly. One graphics program I have used for years installed well, but when I came to use it some facilities were quite useless. At this point one can ask the maker if they have a Vista compatible version or just try to find something that WILL do the job you want. My own experience with the new Windows Mail and Internet explorer were both unsatisfactory and I replaced these with Firefox and
2) There are numerous ways to transfer files (and settings) to the new machine. It would be best to have both machines working alongside each other.
a) You can purchase a cable to connect the two PCs
b) You may be able to save things on the old machine if it has got a CD or DVD writer and then take the CD to the new one
c) I recommend purchase of a large 'Memory Stick' for easy transfers. 1 one gigabyte stick (variously called Flash Drive) is under £10 these days. If your old machine uses Win 98 (and has at least one USB socket) you will still need some software to install the memory device. This may be on a CD with the device or you may have to download it from the manufacturer's site. If your old machine has XP then the memory drive will be automatically recognised as and additional drive when it is inserted into the USB socket. You can then coppy things to it using Windows Explorer (view it using the Windows Key and E or click on 'My Computer' on the desktop). Once you have copied files over to the new machine they can be deleted from the flash drive and more files added.
d) If you can connect both machines to the net it would be possible to copy things to some space offered by a site such as www.Diino.com. This gives 2 Gb of free space, which can be used as an additional temporary storage area. This data can then be downloaded to the other machine.
Vista Easy Transfer Wizard. Take a look at the Help on the Vista machine and follow the instructions. In theory this should transfer various settings, such as Internet connections.
My change over story. I didn't get a cable to connect the two machines and used one big DVD and a number or copies to my 1Gb memory key. Vista has an Easy Transfer Wizard which collects specified information into a file on the old machine. You can then put that on the new machine and click it to install all the data onto it. In my case, when I copied all the available options the whole thing failed. So I copied all my My Documents, Pictures and Videos onto a DVD, then deleted all of those into the Recycler. I then did another Easy (?) Transfer of what remained. This fit onto my memory key in one go and seems to have copied most of the settings and things over. However, I finished up with the two and three copies of every email address ! It was easier to clear that lot and start from scratch, exporting the addresses to a CSV file, copying them onto the new machine using the'key' and importing them. I also exported my favourites but so far haven't imported them. Easy File Transfer didn't do it either. The one buggy program I have found is Windows Mail, which replaces Outlook Express. When I went to empty the Deleted mail folder I got an error message and a suggestion to link to a discussion group about it. There I found dozens of people suffering the same fate with no reasonable cure. I decided to use the Mozilla email client, Thunderbird. It worked fine but only allowed importation from Outlook address books. I therefore had to resort to the old export import game from Outlook Express as I had done with Windows Mail itself.
Someone asked me about transferring email addresses and favourites from a Win 98 machine to a Vista one : This was my reply (all the following applies to whatever Windows you are using)
Unfortunately the Easy Transfer Wizard program with Vista does not (according to Help) work with older versions of Windows.
You will need to export things from the old machine and copy the exported files to the new one then open the new program and import them. This can be done using a memory key or even sending the file to yourself via the internet. The files are not large.
Going to my older machine I went into OE and clicked on Addresses then File and Export. It gave me several options. Address book (WAB), Business Card and Other) Other has Microsoft Exchange and Text file (CSV- I call that comma separated variable) So, you can save addresses to a WAB file and copy that to the other machine or you can create a CSV file, which will offer you the opportunity to choose the fields you want to save, like name, address, postcode, phone. Many of the fields are irrelevant to most of us so don't tick those.
1) So Export it as a Wab file (Windows Address Book). Call it something like New and note where it is saved to. I just emailed it to myself as an attachment, opened the email program on the Vista machine and there it was. I saved the New.wab attachment (and remembered where I put it then clicked on it.) It automatically imported the addresses.
2) The other way is via a CSV file
Export your CSV file and remember where you saved it and what you called it !
A CSV file is a wondrous thing which is pretty well acceptable to any computer program. You can slap it into a spreadsheet, database, wordpad, word etc. I bet you could even import it into an Apple Mac. If you look at the Import options on the email program on the Vista machine you are bound to find CSV as an option, whichever Email program you go for.
3) Favourites This is similar but you must go to Internet Explorer. Click File, Import and Export, Export Favourites. It exports to a file called Bookmark.htm
Remember where it is save to. Send it or copy it to the other machine. Open Internet Explorer; File, Import and Export, Import. Find the Bookmark.htm file and select it. Done !
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