Upgrading PC - Win98SE to XP

Proxy

Hi,

About to take the long-awaited dive to upgrade the home PC (win98SE) and i'm just wondering about ghosting all my apps and files to the new PC (WinXP Home). Anybody any experienced tips/good sites that'll explain how to do it?

I'm handy enough (in other words, i'm not an entire noob) so i'm not afraid of the tech side, just more afraid of making a complete balls of it with a small error?:D Cheers...

conzy

What are the specs of the PC?

It might grind to a halt if you install XP.

And you cant ghost apps accross into windows, You can only use ghost to restore a partition.

Is windows on the same paritition as your storage?

Proxy

Sorry, honest mistake on my part, by upgrading I meant buying a new system, sorry. So how to transfer from old HD to new one? Thanks..

conzy

Oh right, that makes things a lot easier:)

You could just take the HDD out of the old PC, and put in the new PC as a slave HDD, and you will be able to access all your old files and tranfser them to the new machine.

You cannot bring programs from one OS to the next....

Sir Random

Why not just add your old hd to the new PC as a slave harddrive (move the jumper at the back of the old drive to the 'slave' position before attaching it). Then you can just drag all the documents and stuff you want to the new drive.

The easiest way is probably to temporarily disconnect the DVD/CD drive and connect the old harddrive in it's place, using the same ide cable and power dongle. When everything is copied, just remove the old harddrive and replace the DVD drive.

EDIT: oops, beaten to it.

TommyGun

Moving the files is easy using a USB HDD, a crossover cable, other networking (or DVD if you have a writer).

Moving the applications would be a problem. Do you have the original disks for these programs?

Some off these may not be supported or cause a problem in XP.

Can you name the app's you want to carry over?

Proxy

Cheers everybody! Thanks a lot:D.

TommyGun: I have a lot of random progs, but for instance Photoshop (that I don't have a disk for), is there a way to just shift the app folders and files over? Or would there be a registry issue?

conzy

Well I keep programs on a seperate partition, and When I do a reinstsll, most of them work (firefox, audacity......) but programs such as Photoshop that require activation will need to be re activated......

And Windows cant actually "see" the programs, you hvae to go into its folder and put a shortcut to it on your desktop or the programs column in start.

You could try drag the program's folder from "program files" on the old PC to "program files" on the new PC, and then make a shortcut to the program and it MIGHT work.........

astrofool

You're just going to have to install them again, you'll get lots of problems if you try copy/paste programs and generally mess up the new Windows install.

TommyGun

TommyGun wrote:

Moving the files is easy using a USB HDD, a crossover cable, other networking (or DVD if you have a writer).

Moving the applications would be a problem. Do you have the original disks for these programs?

Some off these may not be supported or cause a problem in XP.

Can you name the app's you want to carry over?

I would not try to copy program files over to your new system, your just asking for trouble, unless you are an expert user for each programs as most programs have files in lots of folders under many areas, so to move them is tricky.

MunsterCycling

Depends on version of Photoshop, Version 6 works fine just moving the Photoshop Folder, least it did for me.

netwhizkid

I tried transfering the "Program Files" of MS Office 2000 across to my 2nd partition and back again after the re-install, It wouldn't work so if you have office 2000. You will have to re-install from the Disk. Drat Drat Drat :rolleyes:

MunsterCycling

Most M$ stuff you will have to re-install as they integrate with the system too much, spreading files everywhere. :rolleyes: