I have had bad luck in the past swapping hard drives and especially email windows accounts in the past.
I am thinking about this time doing the cloning method. Clone a hard drive over to the new one that is going in a new computer. That way im thinking there should be no surprizes. The only drawback is running windows 7 32 bit on more modern 64 bit computer. Any suggestions welcome.
Easiest way is to just copy all of your data over to the new computer using the network. Alternatively you could take the hard drive from the old computer and put into the new computer as a slave, you just need to make sure that you boot of the new hard drive into Windows and than just copy over all of your personal data.
Both of the above methods will require you to reinstall all programs, which is the best way to go as it will give you a clean slate to start with.
I have done this process many times over the years using a mix of installing the old drive(s) and doing network transfers. It has also allowed me to consolidate a lot of files that were spread out through folders in documents, pictures, videos, music, ect... into proper folders.
Hi JC, thanks for the tips. I have no problems with data files...... The main problem is effing email accounts. I will get scalped if I frig that up. One thing for sure is will keep windows 7 not go to windows 8. I hate that interface.
Transfer all your email accounts to webmail, e.g. Outlook.com, then it doesn't matter what computer you use.
You can back up outlook.com accounts by syncing a desktop email app to it, e.g. Outlook. After that, all the webmail is downloaded into an .ost file that can be archived.
The two videos helped a lot. I can't believe how small email files are. After exporting, I copied them to a flash drive and copied them to my win 7. Went into windows mail and did the importing. Was faster than coping my data that I wanted to keep on to an external HD then back over to my win 7 laptop.
From my isp's support website I obtain the settings for pop and smtp servers then all I need to do is remember what my e-mail password is
Then I install Thunderbird on the new computer, copy my e-mail over and enter in the proper server settings for email account. Launch Thunderbird and on the first launch enter my password and click the box to remember password.
Works every time for me.
I recently did this for my brother when he purchased a new computer. And he too hated the Windows 8.1 interface and back reved his computer to Windows 7.
This piece of software will help you move your windows user profile to the new computer. You just have to make sure you have all the software installed.
if you're transferring a windows 7 operating system onto a new computer with windows 8, just be sure you can get all the drivers for windows 7 for your new computer. If you don't, you may end up not being scalped for other reasons
You still haven't indicated which program you use for your email. It would probably be an easy task to transfer the mail folders, just have to do a little research for that specific program. Just to point out, Windows 7 mainstream support ends 13 jan 2015. Security updates continue until 14 Jan 2020, but, that is security updates only. If you do any gaming at all you should be interested in DX12, which will run in Windows 10, and 8.1. "Microsoft hasn't officially said one way or another whether Windows 7 will support DX12." That's an ongoing question at the moment.
Windows 8 or 8.1 and hate the interface? Not a problem. Load Classic Shell and you never have to look at the tiled interface again. You can choose your desktop appearance XP, 7, etc. That's what I have done, and it works very well.
Cloning a hard drive is easy. Whether it's IDE or SATA, I have a few spare computers where I hook up the source and target drives and boot Norton Ghost from a floppy and the cloning process takes about 1 minute per GB.
BUT -> getting the clone to run on anything other than an exact duplicate system (same motherboard and video card) is extremely difficult. There is no clean way to do it - every situation will be different as you stumble your way through helping the new system discover new hardware. You will also have to re-validate your installation of windows with Micro$oft at some point along the way - and you'll only get one shot at doing that and if you mess up you'll have to wait 3 or 4 months to try again.
You'll most likely end up booting the Windows installation CD and perform an in-place reinstallation, where all your installed programs and almost all registry settings are maintained.
Since you're going from Windows 7 to Windows 7 Microsoft's User State Migration Tool (USMT) should be able to move all your application data for you effortlessly. Just re-install your apps on the new computer using a throaway user account then import your old user state and everything should work as it did before.
USMT is designed for large-scale deployments and more complex to setup. Windows Easy Transfer is built-in, does essentially the same thing and is well... easier.
BUT -> getting the clone to run on anything other than an exact duplicate system (same motherboard and video card) is extremely difficult. There is no clean way to do it -
Yea, not sure why there were so many posts before someone said this.
You should never clone one system with differing hardware specifications to another and even then, even if specifications matched there's still a proper way to complete that process and it's not a straight cloning.
The focus should be on transferring the user-created data and not the entire system as-is.
BUT -> getting the clone to run on anything other than an exact duplicate system (same motherboard and video card) is extremely difficult. There is no clean way to do it -
Yea, not sure why there were so many posts before someone said this.
You should never clone one system with differing hardware specifications to another and even then, even if specifications matched there's still a proper way to complete that process and it's not a straight cloning.
The focus should be on transferring the user-created data and not the entire system as-is.
Actually that's not quite accurate as Macrium Reflect has in their (paid) version) an option for a "bare metal restore" which has allowed me to migrate my OS/data drives multiple times with zero issues (including a MB failure one month out of warranty :/)
You still haven't indicated which program you use for your email. It would probably be an easy task to transfer the mail folders, just have to do a little research for that specific program. Just to point out, Windows 7 mainstream support ends 13 jan 2015. Security updates continue until 14 Jan 2020, but, that is security updates only. If you do any gaming at all you should be interested in DX12, which will run in Windows 10, and 8.1. "Microsoft hasn't officially said one way or another whether Windows 7 will support DX12." That's an ongoing question at the moment.
Windows 8 or 8.1 and hate the interface? Not a problem. Load Classic Shell and you never have to look at the tiled interface again. You can choose your desktop appearance XP, 7, etc. That's what I have done, and it works very well.
Actually a friend of mine who I set up their new Asus computer which came with Windows 8.1 hated the interface so much so he threatened to return the computer if they would not downgrade to Windows 7. The tech suggested he install 'classic shell' and is a happy camper now... Told me it's just like the Windows 7 experience...
After reading this thread I remembered switching my laptop from XP over to window 7 and I wanted to wipe the drive clean prior to the 64 bit win 7 install. There wasn't much data on it aside from outlook email .pst and archive files. I backed those files up on an external usb drive but had a bit of a time restoring them to the new install so they were visible in outlook. I also use webmail and outlook has a check box option to delete the file on the Web server once it's downloaded. I prefer to set that so email stays on the Web mail service.