Transfer ALL data from old computer to new computer

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 15 Oct 2009 7:48 am

I'm thinking of getting a new lap top,,,with more capacity. Can all the data be transferred to a new computer,,ver batim,,,emails etc,,? I have XP on old computer and would like to get XP on the new one?

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 15 Oct 2009 8:05 am

You may have problems buying a new "name brand" PC with XP. Just about all the new ones will either come with Vista and free upgrade to Windows 7 or will come with Windows 7. There may be a few of the commercial line systems that you can get XP on, but most "consumer" models it's either Vista or as of Oct 22, Windows 7 (and almost all will be the 64 bit version).

Microsoft has the easy transfer program (started in XP); that, and a special USB transfer cable, will transfer USER DATA to a new PC. However, Outlook Express is no longer used, in Vista it was Windows Mail and in Windows 7 there is no e-mail program - you will have to install one and it may not be compatible with your O.E. Address Book or messages.

Only a very few programs can be transferred, you will have to install any compatible programs. In Windows 7 (my recommendation), if you get the Professional version it will have an XP emulator (not the actual term) and allow you to run most XP programs.

XP is no longer "supported" by Microsoft except for security updates.

John Hawkins · Post by **John Hawkins** » 15 Oct 2009 8:54 am

Jack ,

Since there is no support from Microsoft or XP o/s , will the automatic settings to receive security updates still work ? I noticed I got no little yellow shield telling me upates were being offered like I had been receiving before . I got worried about it today so I went directly and downloaed all the security updates applicable to my system .

Just curious if I should go directly every month from now on !

Thanks for all your PC help to us on the forum !!

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 15 Oct 2009 9:32 am

Hey Jack,,,thanks a million for all your help!!!

When you say User Data,,does that include My Pictures, My Documents, settings and passwords, the downloaded programs that we paid for at time of download etc?

Actually I use Mozilla Thunderbird for an email program,,and have tons of saved emails. Can those be transferred?

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 15 Oct 2009 9:50 am

What Jack says, Win 7 is the way to go. Both ultimate and professional vers allow the XP virtual from MS to function (although it will not run " XP compatible games, and the software compatibility list it will run is ominously short). You cannot upgrade over XP but u can in Veeeesta (ugh), you cannot transfer installed apps unless you have the app+installer already.Yes your data as in my docs, my pics, my mucous, etc just burn to disk, drop on a external hdd, or use a usb (thumb) drive. BTW security support for XP will be discontinued by next year. If u have a pc-to-pc lan(crossover type) cable u can transfer files directly between two pc's. That being said, Win7 is easily MS finest work to date,fast ,secure, and unlike Veeesta it doesn't require a Cray mainframe to run on lol. Stormy ;-)ps : it's real purty too

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 15 Oct 2009 10:30 am

Sonny Jenkins wrote: When you say User Data,,does that include My Pictures, My Documents, settings and passwords, the downloaded programs that we paid for at time of download etc?

Your documents, music, videos and images that are saved inside the "My Documents" directory and its sub-directories will be transferred. Downloaded programs will not be transferred, unless you have created a folder inside My Documents to save downloads to. It is best to just burn your commercial paid for setup files to a CD, or thumb drive, along with a text file containing the license codes for each program.

Your passwords to Windows applications will be transferred or at least saved in the transfer file. If you have the same application on the new computer it will apply those passwords and install any saved files or data.

Sonny Jenkins wrote:Actually I use Mozilla Thunderbird for an email program,,and have tons of saved emails. Can those be transferred?

I believe you will need to export all messages, accounts and passwords and your contacts list to a file, or files, then install Thunderbird on the new computer, then import those files and settings.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 15 Oct 2009 2:39 pm

Looks like all questions have been answered. If you decide to buy a new Dell laptop (direct from Dell), e-mail me as I have some discount coupons that I got when I was at Dell in Round Rock last week.

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 16 Oct 2009 8:37 am

After reading about acronis true image,,,,why can't I just clone my old hard drive using true image,,and reload it onto a new drive,,,oooooppps,,,,going from XP to Windows 7,,,?????? If I backed up my old hard drive to an external hard drive,,could I at least access with Win 7 ???

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 16 Oct 2009 9:16 am

Sonny Jenkins wrote:After reading about acronis true image,,,,why can't I just clone my old hard drive using true image,,and reload it onto a new drive,,,oooooppps,,,,going from XP to Windows 7,,,?????? If I backed up my old hard drive to an external hard drive,,could I at least access with Win 7 ???

You can indeed access the old hard drive from Windows 7, as long as it is connected somewhere and powered on. If it is a SATA disk then just plug it into the number 1 connector and plug the virgin drive into SATA 0 and install the Windows 7 onto it. The old drive should appear as drive letter D when you boot into Windows.

You will need to reinstall all applications into Windows 7, including Acronis True Image. Once you have a stable basic system, burn an image and save it to the old drive, in a backup location of your choice.

Some software make refuse to activate again until you contact customer support for an authorization code. Most will supply this code for folks who upgrade their OS, but some may require you to purchase a new license.

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 16 Oct 2009 10:12 am

Probs can arise when trying to reload the old image if your new rig has different chipset, cpu, hw in general. This "protection" is apparently employed to prevent loading an image of the os on other rigs surreptitiously shall we say

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 16 Oct 2009 10:29 am

I must be reading this wrong,,or asking the question wrong???

The way I read the acronis, it will back up (clone) the entire hard drive of my old XP, including applications, emails, commercial downloads etc. onto an external hard drive? If it will in fact do that, and at some point, next week or next year, my old XP hard drive crashes, I buy a new computer with win 7 on it,,,can't I just install everything from the external hard drive onto the new computer,,that's the way I read your web site on the virtues of acronis???

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 16 Oct 2009 11:34 am

The caveat here is that the image u store is not booted and running as a system drive.This imaging protection think doesn't always stop u from reimaging onto a different hw config but sometimes it does. Also different vers of Acronis may not be cross compatible from one os to the another.Also bear in mind that this image is compressed in a proprietary format and as such you can NOT look at this image and or use,change or manipulate any singular file or component of the image period until it is decompressed and restored as an active system drive/partition.If it were as simple as making 1 image of an installed os and then giving a copy of the image, along with a copy of the imaging app away......MS wouldn't sell many copies of an os ;-)btw if you get a new box with win7 you will never want to go back to XP....imho, Stormy

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 16 Oct 2009 2:02 pm

Sonny Jenkins wrote:I must be reading this wrong,,or asking the question wrong???

The way I read the acronis, it will back up (clone) the entire hard drive of my old XP, including applications, emails, commercial downloads etc. onto an external hard drive? If it will in fact do that, and at some point, next week or next year, my old XP hard drive crashes, I buy a new computer with win 7 on it,,,can't I just install everything from the external hard drive onto the new computer,,that's the way I read your web site on the virtues of acronis???

Sonny;
You are getting the gist of the capabilities of Acronis TI, but are misunderstanding it's limitations.

Yes, you can save an image file that can be explored as a "mounted" drive letter, or which can be restored as is to a new hard drive to replace a failed.failing drive. The image contains everything that was on the hard drive from which you boot your operating system. All licenses, activations, files, settings, email, downloads are backed up in a complete Acronis TIB image file.

No, you cannot use an image saved from a working Windows XP installation to load onto a different computer running a different operating system. In fact, restoring an Acronis image to a hard drive results in the saved OS being installed onto that computer. If you bought a Windows 7 PC tomorrow and restored the last good image from your XP computer to its C hard drive, that PC will not boot into Windows at all. The drivers for the hardware will be all wrong. The motherboard chipsets will not be initialized, or possibly even detected. (See workaround below)

Windows Vista started a new design standard for motherboard and chipset builders. In order to take full advantage of the improvements built into the new operating systems backward compatibility with XP and older OSes was dropped. A Certified for Vista/7 motherboard may, or may not have any XP drivers available for it. If your new W7 PC has a non-backwards-compatible motherboard, loading XP will fail, even from an official XP CD.

Workaround:
It is technically possible to install a working operating system onto a different motherboard, should your original fail; and need replacing. If the new motherboard is XP certified - and you have the XP drivers disk for all of the chips on it, you can do a trick in Device Manager that will allow you to install that working computer onto the new motherboard.

To do this you would make sure everything is working up to snuff, virus/malware free, defragmented and checkdisked. You would boot into Windows XP, go to My Computer > Hardware > Devices and open the Devices Manager. There is a vertical listing of the hardware installed and recognized by the OS. It is where one occasionally finds the mysterious yellow or red exclamation marks indicating a disabled device. It is also the place where one can uninstall devices from the OS.

If you open you computer's Device Manager and one by one you uninstall each installed device on the motherboard (disk buses, disk controllers, ports, USB, onboard audio/video/LAN), Apply the changes, then burn a new image file with Acronis, then turn off the computer, the saved image can be restored to a new motherboard. As the PC is booted up Windows will begin detecting the motherboard and its components and will attempt to install the required drivers. If the OS lacks a driver it will ask you for the disk containing that driver. If you have all required drivers for that OS, the new motherboard will be installed.

Note, that this process usually requires you to call Microsoft to request activation over the phone for a repaired licensed installation.

The above does not apply to installing programs and licenses to a different operating system. You will need to reinstall everything from scratch and may need to obtain a new license for some programs. But, if you used the XP Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to export your personal files and settings, and if the new OS recognizes that saved file, you can transfer these things to a new OS, after it is up and running.

These things are usually done by trained computer installers and technicians. There is a lot of room for terminal errors.

I hope this clarifies the abilities and limitations you are facing in this project.

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 16 Oct 2009 8:20 pm

I tried to use Acronis to put my stuff back on to a new hard drive and fresh XP setup. It blew out my new XP and the couputer would no longer boot.
I had to re-format the disc and start over. This time I only downloaded my files from Acronis to a seperate folder where I can restore them to where they belong. Acronis may be good for saving files, but way too complex to do anything else, as Wiz has pointed out.

Robert Tripp · Post by **Robert Tripp** » 16 Oct 2009 8:49 pm

Just as a side note, the last time I looked, ZT Systems (computers) still offered a couple of models with xp pro. I bought one about a year ago and it is by far the best computer I have had, and it's service reps are us based. Threw my old Dell over the fence to my neighbors house.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 16 Oct 2009 10:05 pm

Windows XP is nearing its end of life with Microsoft. It is time to move on to new operating systems. Windows 7 is set to be released next Thursday. Windows 8 development has started already.

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 17 Oct 2009 6:40 am

Yeah and get this Wiz, I guess u prolly heard MS is lookin into win8 and/or win9 bein 128 bit os....I ain't doin the math this early but roughly that's in the exabyte zone as far as ability to map and use nv-ram!! Guess we'll need it for Google Universe edition

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 17 Oct 2009 10:17 am

All your bits are belong to us

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 17 Oct 2009 6:25 pm

I have an, ahem, early copy and an HP with 400 Gig HD to load it on. I'm just afraid most of my programs won't work on it.

Storm Rosson · Post by **Storm Rosson** » 17 Oct 2009 7:13 pm

if u have app compatability probs.....rite clik on the installer .exe file>go down and left clik on properties>choose compatability tab at top go to field and clik box and chose XP Sp2 from the drop down menu, check the "run as administrator" box, close menu and retry the install ;-)and the "ahem" RTM (Retail to Manufacter) ver (the final bits) has been available to Technet + members for at least 2-3 mos, I've been running it as my sole os for over a year ,since beta1 was released

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Transfer ALL data from old computer to new computer

Transfer ALL data from old computer to new computer

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