Has anyone had any success moving from an old PC to a brand new PC running W7?
Old PC: 1998 DEL XPS-R350 Pentium II, 512MB, Windows XP/SP3 (runs slowly !!! )
New PC: DELL Inspiron 545 running W7 Home Premium pre-installed.
Problem: I cannot find a satisfactory method of transferring my user files/settings from my old PC to the new one by any of the recommended methods.
The migration file is 9.6Gb. I got a Belkin 'easy transfer cable' which you hook into both computers, start the wizard and watch it transfer all your files over. It just sat there saying 'trying to connect' but never actually did till it timed-out.
Then I bought a 500Gb desktop external disk. I thought I could use it for backups and offline photo storage etc so it wasn't money wasted. However because its an old PC with old BIOS the disk size is limited to 137Gb max (addressing capability). So, it would not work on my USB 2.0 port. Doesn't appear in Disk Management tool although it prompts me to 'Safely Remove it' so XP sort of thinks it's installed.
Next I saw that USB Flash drives come in 16Gb sizes so I thought that would do nicely. Nope. They come pre-formatted in FAT32 format and I need NTFS format. Not a big problem since I could reformat it on my new PC. However both that, and the 500Gb disk, lock up my old PC when I install them so that nothing works. When I unhook those drives my old PC bursts back into life.
I'm begining to wonder if my USB/PCI interface board is faulty or can only handle files or transfers up to a certain size. If I connect my printers to those ports they seem to work OK.
My old PC has been running VERY slowly for the past several months, hence my decision to invest in a new W7 system. It could be that it has a latent fault, or it could be some other BIOS / system board / USB/PCI 1.1 to 2.0 problem?
I'm runnning out of ideas.
ps my new PC/W7 is brilliant. No bugs whatsoever so far.
/Ian
Old PC: 1998 DEL XPS-R350 Pentium II, 512MB, Windows XP/SP3 (runs slowly !!! )
New PC: DELL Inspiron 545 running W7 Home Premium pre-installed.
Problem: I cannot find a satisfactory method of transferring my user files/settings from my old PC to the new one by any of the recommended methods.
The migration file is 9.6Gb. I got a Belkin 'easy transfer cable' which you hook into both computers, start the wizard and watch it transfer all your files over. It just sat there saying 'trying to connect' but never actually did till it timed-out.
Then I bought a 500Gb desktop external disk. I thought I could use it for backups and offline photo storage etc so it wasn't money wasted. However because its an old PC with old BIOS the disk size is limited to 137Gb max (addressing capability). So, it would not work on my USB 2.0 port. Doesn't appear in Disk Management tool although it prompts me to 'Safely Remove it' so XP sort of thinks it's installed.
Next I saw that USB Flash drives come in 16Gb sizes so I thought that would do nicely. Nope. They come pre-formatted in FAT32 format and I need NTFS format. Not a big problem since I could reformat it on my new PC. However both that, and the 500Gb disk, lock up my old PC when I install them so that nothing works. When I unhook those drives my old PC bursts back into life.
I'm begining to wonder if my USB/PCI interface board is faulty or can only handle files or transfers up to a certain size. If I connect my printers to those ports they seem to work OK.
My old PC has been running VERY slowly for the past several months, hence my decision to invest in a new W7 system. It could be that it has a latent fault, or it could be some other BIOS / system board / USB/PCI 1.1 to 2.0 problem?
I'm runnning out of ideas.
ps my new PC/W7 is brilliant. No bugs whatsoever so far.
/Ian