Transferring Programs and Files

Question

I just puchased Vista Home and should I ( and how ) back up my whole comuter
before installing it? Im a newbee and I won't tell you the color of my hair
LOL but I am pretty good with my computer although I have never backed it up.
If I do what do I back it up onto? a CD or one of those little devices that
hold a lot of info??

Thank you all for your help, I have a bunch of pictures on here and info
that I would hate to lose, oh yea if I uninstall my Office 2003 and reinstall
it as I have been reading here, will I lose all my address's and saved
email?

"jagaman" wrote:

> I transferred my files over from my old Win-XP Pro to my new Windows Vista.
> Office 2003 Pro did not transfer over; all the documents and files did. Is
> it impossible to transfer Microsoft Office when you upgrade?

"ellisfaith" <ellisfaith.TakeThisOut@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> Question
>
> I just puchased Vista Home and should I ( and how ) back up my whole
> comuter
> before installing it? Im a newbee and I won't tell you the color of my
> hair
> LOL but I am pretty good with my computer although I have never backed it
> up.
> If I do what do I back it up onto? a CD or one of those little devices
> that
> hold a lot of info??
>
> Thank you all for your help, I have a bunch of pictures on here and info
> that I would hate to lose, oh yea if I uninstall my Office 2003 and
> reinstall
> it as I have been reading here, will I lose all my address's and saved
> email?

You're way ahead of the curve by thinking about it and having the sense to
ask. I think it is essential, before doing an OS upgrade, to make an image
of the system with a drive imaging program. I currently use Acronis True
Image Home, Version 10, which works in both XP and Vista. This can create a
compressed image of drives which can be stored on external media, such as an
external hard drive in a drive enclosure, connected to the computer via USB,
Firewire or eSata.

To begin with you should always have a full and complete backup of important
data. I use drive imaging for this purpose. Images can be made on a drive
or partition basis; ATI also does file backups and drive cloning. Images
can be full, incremental or differential so subsequent images are much
smaller and it takes much less time to make them. Restores can be done on a
file, partition or image basis.

With the system imaged you can then restore the image if something goes
wrong with the Vista installation.

You can purchase a preassembled external USB hard drive but it is much less
costly (and simple)to put one together. Buy an EIDE hard drive as a white
box version (meaning it doesn't come in the fancy retail box and doesn't
have any utility disks with it (which if needed can be obtained from the
drive manufacturer's web site as a free download), and buy an external hard
drive enclosure. Insert the drive in the enclosure, attach the ribbon cable
and power connector, put the lid back on, attach it via USB cable to the
computer and you're good to go.

You can get a 320 GB Western Digital EIDE Caviar white box hard drive from
Newegg.com for under $90. Enclosures are in the $20 range. There are many
manufacturers of them, Kingwin is one. The cost of Acronis True Image can
vary on a day to day basis on Newegg.com. I saw it go between $29.99 and
$39.99 in various increments on a daily basis. Luckily I caught it at the
low end, but purchase at your favorite software retailer. You will get a
better price than buying direct from Acronis.

And the best thing is after Vista is installed, you can use ATI in Vista to
routinely image the system to the external drive. This is an excellent
backup and recovery solution.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

Don- a new Dell will already have Vista installed and should have all
compatible programs and drivers. I bought a Dell in January but it still had
XP on it. I spent nine and half hours upgrading to Vista yesterday. Part of
the problem was the upgrade CD. Dell recommends against doing a clean
install. They're idiots. The clean install was the ONLY way I could upgrade,
the Dell way (migrate files) crashed the upgrade at the 64% download. Clean
install worked fine. All the rest of the time was spent on upgrading my
programs, driversk, etc. It's all working fine now but it took time and a bit
of technical knowledge.
If you buy a new computer this should already be worked out for you by
Dell.
Your old programs will probably work fine with Vista after you go to the
vendor's website and update drivers, etc. Not too tricky. Only a few programs
really won't work with Vista as long as your computer is Vista ready or
already has it installed.

"djp" wrote:

> I havent yet bought a new PC, Thinking of a Dell but some one said that
> window vista may not run some of my programs from my old PC that has win-XP.
> Don't want to buy new software. Bye the way, I'm new to the computer thing.
> Just want to have a workable PC
> Don
>
>
> "Rock" wrote:
>
> > "jagaman" <jagabits.DeleteThis@yahoo.com> wrote
> > >I transferred my files over from my old Win-XP Pro to my new Windows Vista.
> > > Office 2003 Pro did not transfer over; all the documents and files did.
> > > Is
> > > it impossible to transfer Microsoft Office when you upgrade?
> >
> > Windows Easy Transfer does not migrate programs, only data files. Install
> > programs from the original media.
> >
> > --
> > Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]
> >
> >

Thank you, I forgot to mention that I have Norton Ghost on my XP system. Can
I back up from that to a external item like those stick memory items? Will
that back up every thing? even my photos?
Thank you for your help. If I screw up this up grade I have to listen to my
husband say " I told you so"!. LOL


"Rock" wrote:

> "ellisfaith" <ellisfaith.RemoveThis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> > Question
> >
> > I just puchased Vista Home and should I ( and how ) back up my whole
> > comuter
> > before installing it? Im a newbee and I won't tell you the color of my
> > hair
> > LOL but I am pretty good with my computer although I have never backed it
> > up.
> > If I do what do I back it up onto? a CD or one of those little devices
> > that
> > hold a lot of info??
> >
> > Thank you all for your help, I have a bunch of pictures on here and info
> > that I would hate to lose, oh yea if I uninstall my Office 2003 and
> > reinstall
> > it as I have been reading here, will I lose all my address's and saved
> > email?
>
> You're way ahead of the curve by thinking about it and having the sense to
> ask. I think it is essential, before doing an OS upgrade, to make an image
> of the system with a drive imaging program. I currently use Acronis True
> Image Home, Version 10, which works in both XP and Vista. This can create a
> compressed image of drives which can be stored on external media, such as an
> external hard drive in a drive enclosure, connected to the computer via USB,
> Firewire or eSata.
>
> To begin with you should always have a full and complete backup of important
> data. I use drive imaging for this purpose. Images can be made on a drive
> or partition basis; ATI also does file backups and drive cloning. Images
> can be full, incremental or differential so subsequent images are much
> smaller and it takes much less time to make them. Restores can be done on a
> file, partition or image basis.
>
> With the system imaged you can then restore the image if something goes
> wrong with the Vista installation.
>
> You can purchase a preassembled external USB hard drive but it is much less
> costly (and simple)to put one together. Buy an EIDE hard drive as a white
> box version (meaning it doesn't come in the fancy retail box and doesn't
> have any utility disks with it (which if needed can be obtained from the
> drive manufacturer's web site as a free download), and buy an external hard
> drive enclosure. Insert the drive in the enclosure, attach the ribbon cable
> and power connector, put the lid back on, attach it via USB cable to the
> computer and you're good to go.
>
> You can get a 320 GB Western Digital EIDE Caviar white box hard drive from
> Newegg.com for under $90. Enclosures are in the $20 range. There are many
> manufacturers of them, Kingwin is one. The cost of Acronis True Image can
> vary on a day to day basis on Newegg.com. I saw it go between $29.99 and
> $39.99 in various increments on a daily basis. Luckily I caught it at the
> low end, but purchase at your favorite software retailer. You will get a
> better price than buying direct from Acronis.
>
> And the best thing is after Vista is installed, you can use ATI in Vista to
> routinely image the system to the external drive. This is an excellent
> backup and recovery solution.
>
> --
> Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]
>
>

"ellisfaith" <ellisfaith.TakeThisOut@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> Thank you, I forgot to mention that I have Norton Ghost on my XP system.
> Can
> I back up from that to a external item like those stick memory items?
> Will
> that back up every thing? even my photos?
> Thank you for your help. If I screw up this up grade I have to listen to
> my
> husband say " I told you so"!. LOL

> "Rock" wrote:
>
>> "ellisfaith" <ellisfaith.TakeThisOut@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
>> > Question
>> >
>> > I just puchased Vista Home and should I ( and how ) back up my whole
>> > comuter
>> > before installing it? Im a newbee and I won't tell you the color of my
>> > hair
>> > LOL but I am pretty good with my computer although I have never backed
>> > it
>> > up.
>> > If I do what do I back it up onto? a CD or one of those little devices
>> > that
>> > hold a lot of info??
>> >
>> > Thank you all for your help, I have a bunch of pictures on here and
>> > info
>> > that I would hate to lose, oh yea if I uninstall my Office 2003 and
>> > reinstall
>> > it as I have been reading here, will I lose all my address's and saved
>> > email?
>>
>> You're way ahead of the curve by thinking about it and having the sense
>> to
>> ask. I think it is essential, before doing an OS upgrade, to make an
>> image
>> of the system with a drive imaging program. I currently use Acronis True
>> Image Home, Version 10, which works in both XP and Vista. This can
>> create a
>> compressed image of drives which can be stored on external media, such as
>> an
>> external hard drive in a drive enclosure, connected to the computer via
>> USB,
>> Firewire or eSata.
>>
>> To begin with you should always have a full and complete backup of
>> important
>> data. I use drive imaging for this purpose. Images can be made on a
>> drive
>> or partition basis; ATI also does file backups and drive cloning.
>> Images
>> can be full, incremental or differential so subsequent images are much
>> smaller and it takes much less time to make them. Restores can be done
>> on a
>> file, partition or image basis.
>>
>> With the system imaged you can then restore the image if something goes
>> wrong with the Vista installation.
>>
>> You can purchase a preassembled external USB hard drive but it is much
>> less
>> costly (and simple)to put one together. Buy an EIDE hard drive as a
>> white
>> box version (meaning it doesn't come in the fancy retail box and doesn't
>> have any utility disks with it (which if needed can be obtained from the
>> drive manufacturer's web site as a free download), and buy an external
>> hard
>> drive enclosure. Insert the drive in the enclosure, attach the ribbon
>> cable
>> and power connector, put the lid back on, attach it via USB cable to the
>> computer and you're good to go.
>>
>> You can get a 320 GB Western Digital EIDE Caviar white box hard drive
>> from
>> Newegg.com for under $90. Enclosures are in the $20 range. There are
>> many
>> manufacturers of them, Kingwin is one. The cost of Acronis True Image
>> can
>> vary on a day to day basis on Newegg.com. I saw it go between $29.99 and
>> $39.99 in various increments on a daily basis. Luckily I caught it at
>> the
>> low end, but purchase at your favorite software retailer. You will get a
>> better price than buying direct from Acronis.
>>
>> And the best thing is after Vista is installed, you can use ATI in Vista
>> to
>> routinely image the system to the external drive. This is an excellent
>> backup and recovery solution.

I don't know about Ghost, I don't use it, but I would not recommend using a
flash drive as a secure backup medium. It's ok for temporary storage or for
moving data from one location to another but I would never use it as sole
backup or even as the primary backup. Better to use CD/DVD and best is an
external or networked drive, IMO. I also recommend having duplication on
backups. I have create images to three different external drives,
alternating two of them on a weekly basis for imaging with Acronis True
Image. The third holds a weekly image made by Complete PC backup which is
an imaging program that comes with the Business, Enterprise and Ultimate
versions of Vista. A redundant copy of the current image is burned to DVD.
Some of these are stored off site.

Lol, I'm sure your husband has given you many more opportunities for you to
tell him "I told you so" than the other way around.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

"jagaman" wrote:

> I transferred my files over from my old Win-XP Pro to my new Windows Vista.
> Office 2003 Pro did not transfer over; all the documents and files did. Is
> it impossible to transfer Microsoft Office when you upgrade?