I bought Laplink PCmover to transfer from old XP computer to new Windows 7 box.

[Lasher]

It includes software and a USB easy transfer cable. Just fire it up and watch it run, yaaaay!

No joy. :-(

I was able to load the software and establish a link between the two comupters but the connection kept dropping before the transfer could occur. At length I decided to just use Windows Easy Transfer. That way both computers recognized the Laplink USB 2.0 transfer cable but I could not get a link between the two established.

Think I'll just haul out a router and some CAT5 and set up network between the two computers. Then hopefully Windows Easy Transfer will work. I only wanted PCmover because I want to transfer a program or two, but this has already taken more time than I would have spent without it - not to mention wasted money.

[BlueJazz]

1. Yep....sometimes it's just easier to put your stuff on a 16 gig flash-drive ...

...and "get her done". :)

[hobbit709]

2. Yep, that's what external drives are for.

I've got 100 Gb, 500Gb and 1.5Tb external drives and about 80Gb worth of assorted flash drives that I use for permanent storage of important files and quick transfers.

[Lasher]

3. Got no 16 gig flash drive, boo hoo.

Got a 4GB and a 2GB, that's all. 16GB seemed pricey at one time but I see you can now get a 16GB Cruzer from Buy.com for $33.45, including shipping. Think I'll order one or two.

[lpbk2713]

4. I used Laplink many years ago when I would upgrade PC's

It required a cable connection between the Serial ports. Some times it would take half a day to get
all the files transferred over that the user needed. Back then I thought it was quite handy. :rofl:

How times have changed.

[Lasher]

5. Here's the latest, I think PCmover is incompatible with Windows 7.

From poking around on the internet it looks like this might be true. Gonna call Dell right now and ask them. And if this suspicion is correct, then I will want to know why they sold it to us with the new Windows 7 PC we bought from them.

Edit: Oh yeah? Well when we first started using PCs at work they had no hard drives. We booted them up with two 5 1/2 inch floppies. That was so long ago we printed on papyrus. True story.

[pokerfan]

6. This is true

But we had dual floppy drives in those days. I would have two boxes of floppies, one for programs and one for data.

In college, we used these:



500 KB! :bounce:

[Lasher]

7. Call yourself a real nerd? Man, that was state of the art!

When I was in college we did programs in Basic using these:



BTW, I think I might have finally found a fix for the PCmover fiasco. I will announce results tomorrow.

[pokerfan]

8. The DEC (along with the hp) was in the electrical engineering building

which I couldn't use until I was a sophomore, declared my major and officially joined the department. So I cut my teeth programming Fortran (and Pascal) on punch cards. Then I moved on to the Kim to learn assembler:



where we stored programs on this:



The bad old days indeed.

[Lasher]

9. OK I know when I'm beat.

I'm not worthy!

[pokerfan]

10. Now someone's going to out-geek both of us

and talk about their days programming the ENIAC...

[ProdigalJunkMail]

11. hey...you found my picture...

that's me...back left!

sP

[Warpy]

13. Been there, did that one, best thing about that job was the AC

It was a downer when those vacuum tubes went out. AC got turned up to 80.

[Warpy]

12. I have a docking device for hard drives

which makes it easy to move information to a new box. Since I keep old hard drives rather than recycle them with the computer, this is a good deal for me. I have intact HDs going back to 1995 with files I can still need all this time later.

If you don't mind yanking out a hard drive, the docker is great for transferring just one or two things into a new box.

I didn't have any problem with the cable and EZ Transfer, although it does transfer everything, not just the things you choose. I had to delete a lot of stuff from the new box but the stuff I wanted to transfer over was there. I used the HD docker to transfer what I needed from the ancient HDs.

One thing to remember when transferring to and/or from a laptop is that it has to be plugged in during the transfer. Trying to transfer on battery just won't work.

Now you've reminded me: I just found another old HD and can't remember what's on it. It's time to do another transfer...

[hunter]

14. That's the way I do it too.

It's always a good idea to take the hard drive out of the old computer anyways for security reasons which makes it very easy to plug into a usb dock.

Furthermore by the time a computer is old enough to be replaced, it's either time to send it on to electronic recycling, or to upgrade it with more memory and a much bigger hard drive than it originally had. This will be about the time that hard drives and memory for the old machine are available at clearance sale prices. I can usually max up the memory and hard drive on an old machine for less than $60 (sometimes much less!) to build a very nice Ubuntu box for web browsing and word processing.

[Warpy]

15. I get the cheapest HD I can find

and load all the original software onto it and then recycle the machine to charity.

Even old Win 95 machines can be used for surfing and some of the simpler games and poor kids will be glad to get them.

[Lasher]

16. Update

I finished with the transfer. PCmover and the included easy transfer cable were both worse than useless. Much worse. I wasted lots and lots of time because I was determined to make it work if I could.

Dell support wanted to charge me for the privelege of talking to them about it. And this is a brand new computer I just bought from them. After an argument they agreed to hook me up with a software support tech, who had not a clue.

I tried a PCmover update at the Laplink website. It was supposed to make the software compatiable with Windows 7. It didn't. I opened a chat with a Laplink tech. He said they didn't know why it wouldn't work with Windows 7. Then he pasted a big long list of things for me to try. Long story short, it was nothing but guesses and not very good ones. About 2 minutes into the chat session he said he was going on lunch break and would be back in an hour to see if I needed more 'help' from him.

That was buh bye Laplink, and hello Windows Easy Transfer that comes with Windows 7 for free. By that time I had obtained a 16G flash drive which I used to facilitate the transfer. It was so easy I thought I would puke just to think of all the grief PCmover had cost me.

I'll be returning PCmover to Dell for a refund. Don't buy the crap, it's a big waste of time and money.

[Warpy]

17. There are always options.

One is to buy an HD dock and simply hook the old HD to the new box and transfer at your leisure. Another is to burn all the good stuff on a CD. While you can transfer over a home network, that didn't work for me. Easy transfer did. I used the docker for old stuff going back to 1995.

I've heard that the cables are spotty, at best. My transfer took about half an hour with no glitches, but the new box has all the bells and whistles and I think that made the difference.

Good thing, too, because I finally got around to uninstalling the hated Norton last night and their uninstall program managed to screw up the OS.

So I'll have to piggyback an old HD, load the OS and the drivers onto it, and just run the good stuff from the corrupted HD. Shades of The Antichrist*.

*A miserable tech built box I kept alive for 6 years despite its nasty habit of eating its innards and corrupting its software.