New PC (yay)

Neyla

Alright quick question...

Old PC has Windows Xp, new PC will have Vista. Will there be any (or has anyone had) issues doing a file transfer wizard? Beacuse seriously i dont want to spend hours installing and setting all old stuff. And i dont want to start the process to only find out it will be an epic fail.

Thanks in advance!

MrMonroe

First off, FTW won't reinstall your programs. Installation of virtually everything requires registry files, which cannot be simply copied over, even between two identical computers. (ok, I guess it's possible, but it's a bad idea)

Secondly be aware that MS made the first epic fail in this situation when they made it impossible for a Vista machine to recognize a drive formatted for XP. You'll not get anywhere by putting the old HDD into the new computer, in case you were wondering.

Lastly Vista is actually kinda nice, and a whole different animal than XP. You're better off fiddling with it to see how you like Vista to work best rather than trying to get it to run just like XP did.

And face it.

You like tinkering.

Fantasma

If you have a DVD burner and Norton Ghost, it is possible to clone your old computer hard disk and then proceed to restore such image to your new computer.

Doing this will destroy the Windows Vista Installation, and replace it with Windows XP. After that, you could just boot your new computer in safe mode and install the correct drivers.

However, because you are asking questions here I must assume you won't know how to get out if a problem arises. It will be better for you to just start from zero with your new Windows Vista.

MrMonroe

Fantasma likes to live dangerously, I see. You're essentially popping the old drive into the new computer with that strategy, and it may not even boot. It will surely be an interesting process, though.

Let's just say, if you go that route, be sure not to lose your Vista discs.

blakfeld

Fantasma wrote: »

If you have a DVD burner and Norton Ghost, it is possible to clone your old computer hard disk and then proceed to restore such image to your new computer.

Doing this will destroy the Windows Vista Installation, and replace it with Windows XP. After that, you could just boot your new computer in safe mode and install the correct drivers.

However, because you are asking questions here I must assume you won't know how to get out if a problem arises. It will be better for you to just start from zero with your new Windows Vista.

I could be wrong here, but I'm fairly certain that will not work. I've only tinkered with Ghost a few times, but I know other backup software, like TruImage, actually binds to your motherboard to prevent piracy. Also, make sure the drivers exist for XP first. I've run into that problem before, where the drivers were either a major pain to find, or they simply didn't exist.

Rook

MrMonroe wrote: »

Secondly be aware that MS made the first epic fail in this situation when they made it impossible for a Vista machine to recognize a drive formatted for XP. You'll not get anywhere by putting the old HDD into the new computer, in case you were wondering.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. As I have put my XP drives into a Vista machine just to take files off them no problem, or do you mean something else?

Szechuanosaurus

Windows XP pukes it's guts if you even replace your RAM. It will murder your family if you try and clone it to another PC.

I say just reinstall new programs as you need them. Odds are your old PC is choked up with loads of applications and files you no loner need or use anyway, so this is a good opportunity for a fresh start.

JustinSane07

MrMonroe wrote: »

Secondly be aware that MS made the first epic fail in this situation when they made it impossible for a Vista machine to recognize a drive formatted for XP. You'll not get anywhere by putting the old HDD into the new computer, in case you were wondering.

Wow, this could not be more wrong. If your hard drive is formatted for NTFS (the standard these days), both Vista and XP will read it no problem. You just made that up and offered some horrible advice.

Okay Neyla, there's two ways to do this.

One is plug them both into a switch or router, set up the Sharing on the XP machine, then access the shared folders on the Vista machine. You can copy your data over this way. Like others have said, you still do need to reinstall programs, but this way gets all your data.

The other way is a bit more technical, and depending on your level of expertise, could be challenging for you. I don't know you, so I don't know how much you know. Did that even make sense? Whatever. Take the HDD out of the XP machine and put it into the Vista machine. Make sure the boot order has the Vista HDD ahead of the XP HDD. This will boot the machine into Vista. Vista will detect the new HDD and you will be able to access all your files on the XP HDD that way. You'll be able to copy everything over to the new Vista HDD. When you're done, turn the PC off and put the XP HDD back into the XP PC.

Voila.

With the first method, it's less technically challenging but requries more hardware and is a slower method. The second one is the opposite. A direct HDD to HDD transfer is faster than over an Ethernet connection.

Dunadan019

JustinSane07 wrote: »

The other way is a bit more technical, and depending on your level of expertise, could be challenging for you. I don't know you, so I don't know how much you know. Did that even make sense? Whatever. Take the HDD out of the XP machine and put it into the Vista machine. Make sure the boot order has the Vista HDD ahead of the XP HDD. This will boot the machine into Vista. Vista will detect the new HDD and you will be able to access all your files on the XP HDD that way. You'll be able to copy everything over to the new Vista HDD. When you're done, turn the PC off and put the XP HDD back into the XP PC.

Voila.

this is exactly what i did when i got my new computer, there were some problems with accessing user data from the admin account but i got by it. not really hard and it gives you an internal storage HD if you want to format it after you move all of your stuff.

Neyla

JustinSane07 wrote: »

MrMonroe wrote: »

Secondly be aware that MS made the first epic fail in this situation when they made it impossible for a Vista machine to recognize a drive formatted for XP. You'll not get anywhere by putting the old HDD into the new computer, in case you were wondering.

Wow, this could not be more wrong. If your hard drive is formatted for NTFS (the standard these days), both Vista and XP will read it no problem. You just made that up and offered some horrible advice.

Okay Neyla, there's two ways to do this.

One is plug them both into a switch or router, set up the Sharing on the XP machine, then access the shared folders on the Vista machine. You can copy your data over this way. Like others have said, you still do need to reinstall programs, but this way gets all your data.

The other way is a bit more technical, and depending on your level of expertise, could be challenging for you. I don't know you, so I don't know how much you know. Did that even make sense? Whatever. Take the HDD out of the XP machine and put it into the Vista machine. Make sure the boot order has the Vista HDD ahead of the XP HDD. This will boot the machine into Vista. Vista will detect the new HDD and you will be able to access all your files on the XP HDD that way. You'll be able to copy everything over to the new Vista HDD. When you're done, turn the PC off and put the XP HDD back into the XP PC.

Voila.

With the first method, it's less technically challenging but requries more hardware and is a slower method. The second one is the opposite. A direct HDD to HDD transfer is faster than over an Ethernet connection.

You know I didn't even think of that (the HDD part). That would make things alot less painful and time consuming since i have a boat load of Vid files and mp3 to bring over.

Btw.

Started the process last night (with windows file transfer wizard) and got a a bunch of errors. Mainly my video and mp3's and such were getting errors, not transferring, so i cancelled it early on.

MrMonroe

No, it happened to me and other people on the Vista help forums confirmed problems with it. It's an odd quirk, perhaps, but I was never able to get my Vista machine to recognize my XP formatted hard drive. Plugged it into an XP machine to transfer the files onto an external I had plugged into my Vista machine beforehand and it worked like a charm.

So no, I did not just "make it up."

Nova_C

XP isn't a 'format'.

Does Vista read FAT32? I know even up to early versions of XP you could format with FAT32 instead of NTFS. That may have been the problem.

Rook

Sounds more like a hardware issue than a problem with Vista though.

edit: Vista reads FAT32, iirc most thumb drives are FAT32

Nova_C

Rook wrote: »

Sounds more like a hardware issue than a problem with Vista though.

edit: Vista reads FAT32, iirc most thumb drives are FAT32

Hmm, then I would have no idea why it wouldn't read, but considering I've never heard that, sounds like a coincidence. Vista and XP don't treat hard drives any differently. It's a pretty low layer of the OS and is more format dependent than anything.

Nakatomi2010

You can techncially pull an XP drive and put it into an entirely different machine and make it bootable as long as the two machines have the same chpset and mass storage chip set, if they do then you can swap the drives and perform a repair installs.

This is not recommended, but possible...