migration software

[danmer]

looking for a good program to tranfer from my old pc to new..and will it leave my old pc fully functional? thank for any suggestions

[pam123]

You don't need to buy anything more, an excellent program comes with XP.
Windows' Files & Settings Transfer Wizard will do the job for you.
If you use Mozilla (Firefox,Thunderbird) then you can download Moz Backup : http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ for your bookmarks and email and burn everything to disk before you start but that would be the only third party program (it's also free) you'd need.

edit : Remember that you have to reinstall programs so either burn them to disk before you start or have their CDs ready.

[danmer]

THANKS...will that use a usb cable between th two?

[Ob1]

no, use a crossover networking cable.

[pam123]

As Ob1 says, unless you want to put the hard drive in a usb enclosure.

[danmer]

will xp transfer my drivers also. i have a canon printer and scannr i would like to reuse but i had to download the driver for windows me when i first got it.

[pam123]

No.
Installed drivers will not transfer and it's the same for installed programs.
The files they created will.
If you don't have downloaded programs, drivers and otherwise, burned to cdr or saved to disk then get them now.
I would just put them in a file in My Documents and transfer them with the rest of the data.
That way you won't have to hunt for them later.

[hobey19]

if you post the model of the printer, the drivers should be pretty easy to track down on the canon website if you don't have the disc

craig

[pam123]

Originally Posted by danmer will xp transfer my drivers also. i have a canon printer and scannr i would like to reuse but i had to download the driver for windows me when i first got it.

Make sure you get the drivers for XP when you download them.
Since you're just going to transfer them to XP the fact that they're not ME drivers won't matter.

[danmer]

hey thanks for the help..one more question can i back up programs on a extermal harddrive from the old then move it to the new pc and pick what program i want..I have the true image program?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by danmer hey thanks for the help..one more question can i back up programs on a extermal harddrive from the old then move it to the new pc and pick what program i want..I have the true image program?

Let's say you downloaded a version of Nero.
You have the registration number and everything and, when you downloaded and saved it to a file you installed it from there.
You have both the program and the install.
So, first you check to make sure the program will run at all under your new operating system, if it won't you can't use it.
If it will then yes you can back up the download to an external hard drive and use that to transfer it to the new pc.
You could even burn the program to disk and install it that way, no true image software needed.

[faulkner132]

Originally Posted by pam123 You don't need to buy anything more, an excellent program comes with XP. Windows' Files & Settings Transfer Wizard will do the job for you.

On the off chance you are on a Windows domain, the Files & Settings Transfer Wizard is *not* an effective tool for moving your profile to a new machine... it would be much faster to let the domain build a new profile automatically and then copy the files over.