Transferring from old to new laptop

Well it appears that my old Toshiba laptop with Windows XP is not looking too good. I am getting blue screens at least once per day. If it doesn't go blue, it locks up and the only way out is to just hit the power button.

So before it goes blue for the last time, I just got a brandy new HP laptop with Windows 7. Supposedly I can use Windows easy share or something like that or use an external hard drive to transfer all my files and programs to the new one. I do have an external drive.

Any recommendations one way or the other ?? I need to transfer my Office 2007, Quickbooks, and other programs including Acrobat Pro. A lot of these programs I have had for years and only buy the upgrade every few years so trying to get the original source disc may be a problem.


Any suggestions ???



Rick

I used the MS "Easy Transfer" software when I updated my desktop from XP to Win 7.

It works as advertised, which is not something I usually say about MS products.

Not sure if it will transfer everything you want it to though.

Moving files is easy...the programs are a different story. I think you will need the original install disk for Office and Quickbooks. The next time you have Quickbooks fired up, use the backup feature and save the backup file on your external drive...you will need it to "restore" the files when you get Quickbooks installed on the new laptop.

I'd just get my personal files, if you have a router you can set up the folders so they are networked and move them to new computer also on the network.

As far as the software goes I do fresh installation. How old is the quickbooks? That may be problem if it's earlier than 2001 edition because it requires MS VM which AFAIK is unavailable.

On that note you might want to consider one of the open source solutions like gnucash.

I'd suggest getting everything you can onto the external drive, ASAP. Then if the old machine quits for the last time at least you have the data in portable format.

If the hard drive itself is still good -- that is, if it is something else that's going bad on the old PC -- then you might buy yourself a little time if you can find an identical machine on eBay or locally, and swap the hard drive into it.

For the future, you can make a folder on your new PC called Installs, and whenever possible copy the product CDs into their own sub-folders and make a Read_Me.txt file containing installation codes, etc. Do the initial product installation from the hard drive folder rather than from the CD, so you know whether it works that way, and then any needed future re-installation can be done the same way without holding on to all those CDs and DVDs forever.

Last time I had to upgrade my office PC, I tried an advertised pc-mover product that claims to move installed applications intact from one machine to another, so a formal re-install is not needed. The product was total garbage -- almost no applications except the very simplest worked, and as I recall it corrupted Windows on the new machine as well. The only good thing about it was they gave my money back with very little hassle -- apparently they had had a lot of practice doing THAT. Maybe the product is better now, my experience was a couple years ago.

rberq wrote:If the hard drive itself is still good -- that is, if it is something else that's going bad on the old PC -- then you might buy yourself a little time if you can find an identical machine on eBay or locally, and swap the hard drive into it.

Somewhere I have an adapter that allows you to plug a 2.5" laptop hard drive to a USB harness. I used it to recover files when the motherboard died on a laptop.

This is what I use for transferring any data from removed internal drives! Works very well.

http://www.newertech.com/products/usb2_adaptv2.php

coalvet wrote:This is what I use for transferring any data from removed internal drives! Works very well.

http://www.newertech.com/products/usb2_adaptv2.php

Bingo. That looks just like the one I used.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QY9KIS/ref=asc_df_B000QY9KIS1951620?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B000QY9KIS&hvpos=none&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1353352063670889659&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=
Works nice on every type of drive...
Windows easy transfer for data...
Works well but does not move programs; nothing moves programs between xp and 7...
Going to have to track down the disks and serial #'s...
Screen shot the page that has them from the working laptop...
May have to do some upgrades with quickbooks...
Backup QB before you do the upgrades...
For that matter do an image of the drive before anything else...
Friends don't let friends work on computers without an image...
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/
You can use Acronis home to do an image of the laptop and then mount the image on the new computer...
If the drive is failing...
The image is priceless...
Is the old drave making any clacking noises or buzzing other than normal...

Well it looks like I'm going to try Laplink PC mover software.

Supposedly it will transfer old programs. However there may be a problem going from 32 to 64 bit.

I'll see how that works. I don't have awhole lot of time to do this. I need the files for a huge seminar we are putting on for the collision industry on Thursday-Saturday. Of course there never is a good time to do this.

Thanks for all the replies. In the mean time, I will be backing up the old hard drive to the external drive tomorrow before trying the software.

I'll report back on whether it works or not.


And now it looks like I have to relight the Hyfire tomorrow. I was really hoping I was done with heating the shop except for painting..........




Rick

Make sure you make a restore disk for the new win 7 computer...
If the program FUBARS the new computer you will need the restore disk to make you whole...
I always go with the clean install...
Program migration is just not worth the hassle...

Rick 386 wrote:Well it looks like I'm going to try Laplink PC mover software.

Good luck. That's the one I used which was worse than worthless. But like I said, that was a couple years ago, maybe they are better now.

Well you guys scared the crap out of me so I am doing a clean install and only migrating the data.

Thanks a lot. Now I have to search for all the old install discs. Found most but can't locate the acrobat pro 9.

I do have the key. Is there a place where i can download the original program ??? Searching the Adobe website is.................fun NOT !!!!!




Rick

http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Details.aspx?type=Software&p=Adobe%20Acrobat%20Pro&v=Adobe&uid=9&l=en&pf=0&pi=6&s=adobe%20flash&os=64-bit
If you are the legit owner you can call Adobe and get a link to download Acrobat 9 Pro...
Play kinda dumb like your wife is gonna kill ya...
Trust me it works...
Adobe site does suck...

If you just want to make an image of your drive, instead of paying for acronis, you can use a program called Clonezilla.
It's a Linux based program that you boot up off the cd drive and create a exact image of your drive.
It can be a bit confusing to use at first as clonezillla has a command line interface not a GUI like windows. But it only takes a couple of minutes to figure it out. Being open source clonezilla is a free download and free to use.

Last summer I cloned the hard drive in my laptop to install a larger drive then used GPARTED to expand the useable part of the drive to it's full capacity. It only took a couple of hours to do.