Genealogy Chat

I'd go with John's suggestion. It's the easiest option. Remove the hard drive from your old machine and install it as a slave hard drive in your new one. XP will do this automatically once you have changed the jumper settings on the back of the old hard drive before putting it in the new machine. You will have access to all of your old files and e-mails and can import them all from the old slave to the new master. You will obviously have to reinstall all of your programs. All you'll have to buy is a new IDE cable (about £3). It will take about 20 minutes to do. Regards Ron www*genealogyprinters*com

I'll nudge a thread I added to explaining how to back up emails and email settings - it's called 'back up everything' or something like that. You may also wish to run the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. Click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and you will find it there - just follow the on screen instructions

If your on about your files e.g. pictures, letters etc. right click on the file and you should have a menu option 'Send to' if you put the mouse on that, a sub menu comes up and on that will be your cd-rw drive. Once you have finished go to my computer select your cd-rw drive and one of the options on the left hand pane should be 'Write these files to cd' then just follow the prompts

Raymond This is something that whole articles in computer magazines are written about. So just a few basic principles. 1. You can't just copy everything on to a disc and copy it on to the new PC. It won't work and there's far too much data for one disc anyway. 2. All the software programs have to be installed from scratch on the new PC, so you need to have all the original program CDs. I assume the new PC comes with its own copy of Windows. 3. You can copy My Documents and other data to a CD and transfer it to the new PC. BUT there are sometimes compatibilty problems between CD-ROM drives and the data format they use on CDs. 4. It is often possible to remove the hard disk drive from one PC and install it as a slave drive in the new PC. BUT you need to know what you are doing. 5. For Pete's sake hang on to the old PC until everything has been transferred succssfully. If in doubt pay a professional to do it for you. J

Save as you would any other time, but make sure you go to my computer and select the disk drive (ie CD is usually D drive).

I am changing my PC in the next couple of days, can anyone please tell me how to download everything to a disc, I cant seem to find anything about it, In simple layman terms please, I am not up to scratch on IT, but I am trying to learn.