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Mike Henderson
11-30-2016, 12:08 PM
I use a Windows computer - a couple of them, actually. I got a great deal from a guy on a lightly used i7 computer with 32G of RAM and decided to convert my primary computer to that one. Problem is, I have a LOT of programs and data on my computer and moving things over is a real pain.

I found this program by a company called Zinstall by the name of Win-Win that claims it will move your old computer to a new computer so that the new computer looks exactly like the old one. I used it and wanted to pass along the info to others who might face the same problem.

It works with a few issues. For all your "purchased" programs you have to go through authentication again, so make sure you have all the codes - but at least you don't have to install everything again. I had a problem with Adobe Acrobat where it couldn't access my scanner and had to un-install Acrobat and re-install it again. For Photoshop, I had to disable the license on my old computer and move it to my new computer.

But the new computer really does have everything that was on the old one and it "looks" just like the old one. And the old one is unchanged.

The down side? It's expensive - a bit over $100 and it's only good for one transfer. They guarantee the transfer and will work with you if you have problems. If it doesn't work, they say they they will refund you.

I tried another program by a company called Easus - ToDo PCTrans, if I remember correctly. It was junk - didn't work at all.

Anyway, just thought I'd pass that along. I'm going to use my old machine as a Linux learning machine. Just thought it was time for me to learn a bit about Linux.

Mike

[And just one more tip. An i7 doesn't do anything for you if all you do is mail and Internet access. Those are limited by disk access speed and Internet access speed. Where an i7 really shines is in dealing with photos and video and (I assume) playing video games (I don't play). Otherwise, stick with an i5 with an SSD.]

[One more thing: LapLink makes a product and from reviews on the web, it appears that the product sticks bloatware on your new computer as part of the transfer.]

Jim Koepke
11-30-2016, 12:52 PM
Good information for those who are upgrading their hardware.

On the other side of the platforms, my old Mac became obsolete and my computer needed to be upgraded to work with new internet security, at least for our banking. The upgrade was a bit tedious since the old firewire connectors have gone away and the new technology is a Thunderbolt connection. Fortunately my old back up disk could also connect via USB. Since then the appropriate array of connectors have been purchased to go from Thunderbolt to Firewire 800 to Firewire 400.

The Macintosh has a program called Time Machine. The old machine was logged into Time Machine one last time and then the first thing with the new machine was to run the Time Machine back up. It took some time due to the USB connection, but now it is all pretty much the same as my old computer.

Other than being a bit old, there is nothing wrong with the old machine. Sad when something that was top of the line can become obsolete after only eight or nine years.

I have thought of getting some speakers for it and setting it up in the shop as a juke box.

jtk

Larry Browning
11-30-2016, 2:16 PM
I'm going to use my old machine as a Linux learning machine. Just thought it was time for me to learn a bit about Linux.

If you are looking for a good use for that old machine, turning it into a file/media server can be a fun project.
Here is a link to a web site with step by step instruction to install Linux and all the software needed to setup a first class file/backup/media server.
http://www.havetheknowhow.com

It's not mentioned on the site, but adding the PLEX media server coupled with the PLEX app on a Roku is a really nice addition as well.

I have always found doing manual re-installs is the preferred way for me to transfer all my stuff to a new computer. It gives me a chance to "clean house" and get a fresh start. I tend to "mess" with my computer quite a bit, and who knows what kind of junk I have accumulated over the years. I would rather spend the time doing them one at a time. I know it is WAY more time consuming, but I usually don't have anything that falls in the gotta have it going RIGHT NOW! category anyway.

Mike Henderson
11-30-2016, 3:45 PM
Thanks for the pointer, Larry. I'll check it out.

Yes, many people recommend re-installing everything from scratch but there's so much more than just installing the software. I have all kind of custom configuration options that I've done over time to my computer and I don't even remember how to do all of them again. I'd have to go back and research how to do all of them - whenever it hit one that didn't work the way I wanted it to.

If my setup wasn't so complex I'd have just done a fresh install. I realize I'm carrying some stuff from long ago but I'll pay that penalty.

This computer conversion problem has to be a major impediment to getting people to purchase a new computer. You'd think a computer company would offer a conversion service. The software could recognize the "new" computer and only work to convert to their brand of PC.

Even with the conversion program, it probably took me two days to get things working fully (not all day long, but a significant number of hours).

Mike

Rich Engelhardt
12-01-2016, 6:26 AM
The down side? It's expensive - a bit over $100 and it's only good for one transfer.Let me put that figure in perspective for you...When I retired five years ago as an IT Senior System Engineer & Database Administrator, I still had a bunch of old long time customers that had followed me pretty much my entire career from a simple repair tech all the way through. My service rates began at a flat $80 back in the early 1990's, up to , roughly $180 an hour (for the old faithful customers)by the time I retired.
Transferring one old computer over to a new one for them and setting up all the required programs & most importantly, making everything run right - took roughly 7 hours!


You'd think a computer company would offer a conversion service.Been there w/several, none worked. The biggest problem was - - compatibility among old and new programs.
If the software writers had just listened to and gone along with what Microsoft wanted, then Apple would have sunk decades ago because Windows would have been a rock solid stable secure OS.
One of my biggest problems came about trying to make HP printers work over the years. If only HP had complied with MS's requirements for drivers, there would have been no problems.

Do you know what an insurmountable task it was to try to make people understand that, the most popular printer make on the planet, was not compatible with the most popular computer OS on the planet?
It's been a long time since I looked, but, none of the HP laser printers ever had the "Flying Windows" sticker on them, assuring that the product was 100% compliant with other 'Flying Windows" products.


Oh man, my head hurts just bringing all that up again....


Even with the conversion program, it probably took me two days to get things working fully (not all day long, but a significant number of hours).Imagine if you had to pay someone - even a small portion of the cost - of making a workable transfer like that? Thankfully, in the business world, once you solved a "transfer problem" on one PC, you solved it on several. One problem could take days to solve, but, spread out over a couple dozen machines the fix was pretty quick.

Frederick Skelly
12-01-2016, 7:05 AM
This is helpful Mike! Thank you!
Fred

Pat Barry
12-01-2016, 8:20 AM
Just asking - Isn't it possible to take the hard drive out of the old computer, install it in the new computer and turn on the power and let er boot up?

Curt Harms
12-01-2016, 8:52 AM
If you want to dabble with with linux, check into creating a live USB. Rufus is one common windows program to create live USBs, Unetbootin is another. You'd need a live DVD/live USB to install to a hard drive and a live DVD/USB will do quite a bit without touching the hard drive. Live USB is quicker than DVD to boot and open included programs. Some older machines - perhaps older than 2008 - may be finicky about booting from a live USB and are happier with a DVD. Here's an oversight of linux distros. (https://distrowatch.com/)Mint with the cinnamon desktop should be familiar to Windows users. Zorin is another that is often referenced but I have no experience with Zorin. The two most common hardware problems are Wifi - as in the chip doesn't have a linux driver yet - or Secure boot/UEFI. Secure boot/UEFI is generally only an issue if the machine came with Win8/Win10.

Grant Wilkinson
12-01-2016, 9:33 AM
Pat: The short answer is "no". Your new pc will need different drivers for the motherboard and any onboard peripherals such as video cards and sound cards. You may get away with using MS repair procedures, but I've never had good luck when I tried to use them in your context.

Jim Becker
12-01-2016, 9:33 AM
Just asking - Isn't it possible to take the hard drive out of the old computer, install it in the new computer and turn on the power and let er boot up?

It may be physically possible, but it's not necessarily desirable to do it. Why? Firstly, that older OS might not have what's necessary to work with the new computer. Secondly, newer hard drives and SSDs (the latter is really the way to go at this point, IMHO) are faster and more efficient. And you'd still likely need to re-authorize the programs because they often key into information tied to the computer system itself. One of the big benefits of a new computer is not bringing forward all the "garbage" that's accumulated over time on the old one, too.

I personally just re-install applications when it comes to Windows. Things are a bit easier on MacOS because restoring from TimeMachine is pretty slick and Apple also has usable migration tools. I used those features when I upgraded the drive in my "work" Mac to a larger SSD and it was nearly painless.

Mike Henderson
12-01-2016, 10:27 AM
Just asking - Isn't it possible to take the hard drive out of the old computer, install it in the new computer and turn on the power and let er boot up?
I wish! The problem is that different computers use different components. So if your new computer has something different, the OS for the old computer probably won't support it.

What can work for corporations is if they buy a bunch of computer that are all the same. Then, you can set one up and clone the disk and put copies in the others - and even that requires some tweaking of each unit.

Mike

Shawn Pixley
12-01-2016, 10:31 AM
Just asking - Isn't it possible to take the hard drive out of the old computer, install it in the new computer and turn on the power and let er boot up?

This is tangential and not necessarily accurate for Wintel Machines; but with Macs, you can connect the two machines together and start the old one in target disc mode. This allows you to copy / transfer items directly. I had a head crash in the HD of my 7 year old iMac. I was able to transfer items to a portable terabyte drive. It is easier if there are two computers involved.

In the past, I have taken the old HD out and put it into an empty bay in the new computer (again Mac based).

Jim Koepke
12-01-2016, 2:57 PM
I personally just re-install applications when it comes to Windows. Things are a bit easier on MacOS because restoring from TimeMachine is pretty slick and Apple also has usable migration tools. I used those features when I upgraded the drive in my "work" Mac to a larger SSD and it was nearly painless.

Even with Macs the drive configuration has changed over the years. In the early days it was possible to install an old drive into an extra bay in a new machine. It appears the useful life of a machine is about 5 to 8 years. In that time technology changes, connectors change and hard drive technology changes.

With TimeMachine my changing machines was painless other than the time it took because of using a USB cable instead of having all the dongles needed to use my old firewire cable. Afterwards the only things that did not work were legacy programs written for G4 processors of old.

My browser bookmarks, passwords and old mail came through unscathed.

Yes, there are technical problems at times with a Mac, but most IT people insist the big money and constant employment are in the world of Windows™.

jtk

Shawn Pixley
12-01-2016, 8:27 PM
Even with Macs the drive configuration has changed over the years. In the early days it was possible to install an old drive into an extra bay in a new machine. It appears the useful life of a machine is about 5 to 8 years. In that time technology changes, connectors change and hard drive technology changes.

With TimeMachine my changing machines was painless other than the time it took because of using a USB cable instead of having all the dongles needed to use my old firewire cable. Afterwards the only things that did not work were legacy programs written for G4 processors of old.

My browser bookmarks, passwords and old mail came through unscathed.

Yes, there are technical problems at times with a Mac, but most IT people insist the big money and constant employment are in the world of Windows™.

jtk

You are so right on the Mac issue. I used to move everything over. But recently I found files and stuff that really won't work with OS 10.12. None of it is important, and it just chews up space.

glenn bradley
12-01-2016, 9:30 PM
If you want to dabble with with linux, check into creating a live USB. Rufus is one common windows program to create live USBs, Unetbootin is another. You'd need a live DVD/live USB to install to a hard drive and a live DVD/USB will do quite a bit without touching the hard drive. Live USB is quicker than DVD to boot and open included programs. Some older machines - perhaps older than 2008 - may be finicky about booting from a live USB and are happier with a DVD. Here's an oversight of linux distros. (https://distrowatch.com/)Mint with the cinnamon desktop should be familiar to Windows users. Zorin is another that is often referenced but I have no experience with Zorin. The two most common hardware problems are Wifi - as in the chip doesn't have a linux driver yet - or Secure boot/UEFI. Secure boot/UEFI is generally only an issue if the machine came with Win8/Win10.

Another handy "second life" for old machines. I just loaded a small version of lubuntu (yes, starts with an "L") onto an old doorstop laptop that only had 384meg of RAM. Boots up, loads Firefox and opens pandora. Presto, free internet radio thingy ;-)

Jim Becker
12-01-2016, 9:40 PM
Yes, no surprise that some older Mac apps will not work under 10.12. That said, Mac apps install differently than Windows applications and at least are easier to move by simply copying them in many cases.

As to drives, my 27" iMac is a Mid-2010. I recently installed a nice "half-terabyte" SSD as the primary and reformatted the original 1TB platter as an auxiliary onboard drive for photo storage. (in addition to my externals) The work was easy and even with that age, the interface was "current" outside of a slightly lower transfer speed. I have 16gb of RAM in it, runs the latest OS, is fast enough to do even the photo processing in Lightroom and Photoshop that I handle a few times a week and and other than a little slight fading of the backlight on the right side of the screen, it runs like it's brand new. I plan on getting at least another year out of it, assuming the display hangs in there. :) Oh, and I run Win10 in Parallels for support of Quicken. (The Mac version still isn't up to snuff...)

But that's getting away from what I think the OP intended for this thread...there are ways to get what you have on the old over onto the new and it may be worth considering utilities that are geared to do that rather than having to completely reinstall and rebuild manually.

Chuck Wintle
12-03-2016, 8:51 AM
Just asking - Isn't it possible to take the hard drive out of the old computer, install it in the new computer and turn on the power and let er boot up? Yes it is possible ans I have done it myself. Usually it will boot up and begin to look for updated drivers for the new hardware.

Chuck Wintle
12-03-2016, 8:52 AM
I use a Windows computer - a couple of them, actually. I got a great deal from a guy on a lightly used i7 computer with 32G of RAM and decided to convert my primary computer to that one. Problem is, I have a LOT of programs and data on my computer and moving things over is a real pain.

I found this program by a company called Zinstall by the name of Win-Win that claims it will move your old computer to a new computer so that the new computer looks exactly like the old one. I used it and wanted to pass along the info to others who might face the same problem.

It works with a few issues. For all your "purchased" programs you have to go through authentication again, so make sure you have all the codes - but at least you don't have to install everything again. I had a problem with Adobe Acrobat where it couldn't access my scanner and had to un-install Acrobat and re-install it again. For Photoshop, I had to disable the license on my old computer and move it to my new computer.

But the new computer really does have everything that was on the old one and it "looks" just like the old one. And the old one is unchanged.

The down side? It's expensive - a bit over $100 and it's only good for one transfer. They guarantee the transfer and will work with you if you have problems. If it doesn't work, they say they they will refund you.

I tried another program by a company called Easus - ToDo PCTrans, if I remember correctly. It was junk - didn't work at all.

Anyway, just thought I'd pass that along. I'm going to use my old machine as a Linux learning machine. Just thought it was time for me to learn a bit about Linux.

Mike

[And just one more tip. An i7 doesn't do anything for you if all you do is mail and Internet access. Those are limited by disk access speed and Internet access speed. Where an i7 really shines is in dealing with photos and video and (I assume) playing video games (I don't play). Otherwise, stick with an i5 with an SSD.]

[One more thing: LapLink makes a product and from reviews on the web, it appears that the product sticks bloatware on your new computer as part of the transfer.]
you are right it is expensive.

Curt Harms
12-03-2016, 11:02 AM
Just asking - Isn't it possible to take the hard drive out of the old computer, install it in the new computer and turn on the power and let er boot up?

That actually IS possible with linux distros if you have no proprietary drivers installed or if you disable the proprietary drivers before removing the drive. Linux has a different architecture and driver model than Windows. If I had proprietary Nvidia or AMD drivers installed and swap the drive to a machine without Nvidia or AMD hardware it can get ugly. There are pluses and minuses to both systems.