Newbie Transferring Files from Old to New Machine

[Clocker]

Guys-

A friend at work has an old P90 machine. He just bought a new Dell and wants to transfer some of his files from the old machine to the new. He has too many files to use floppies and the P90 does not have a burner. Opening the machine(s) and transferring the hard drive of the old box into the new box is NOT an option for him. How would you recommend he do it? I've heard that XP has a built in wizard to handle this but I'm not sure how (or how good) it works. Any help on this would be appreciated....

Thanks,
C

 

[Tea]

If opening the box is too hard, then it's too hard. Opening the box is by far the easiest way to do it. Compared to figuring out how to set up a network or anything else of that nature - forget it. Much, much harder.

If the data set is small enough, he could email it to himself, but that's the only other option.

Here is what you tell him to do:

(1) Unscrew the box, extract the hard drive.

(2) Unscrew the new box, unplug the ribbon cable from the CD-ROM drive and plug it into the hard drve. Make sure that the stripe on the cable is next to the power socket. Plug in a spare power lead. (Small, multi-coloured lead with 4 wires - it won't go in the wrong way up. If he can't find a spare lead floating, use the one from the CD-ROM drive.)

(3) Drag & drop.

(4) Plug the ribbon cable back into the CD-ROM drive, making sure that the stripe is next to the power cable.

(5) Open fridge.

(6) Open beer.

If that is really too hard for him, then he needs to take it to someone like Mercutio. We would charge about $US20 or 25 for that little job. Essentially, that's about $5 for doing the data transfer, $10 for answering the phone and listening to his life story (they always want to tell you their life stories), and $10 for buggerising about removing all the spyware and sorting out the desktop and switching the DMA on and showing him how to change video resolutions and making sure he knows how to drop My Documents into Nero.

 

[.Nut]

...Opening the machine(s) and transferring the hard drive of the old box into the new box is NOT an option for him...

Why not?


Then, the second option would be to install a pair of Ethernet cards in both machines and transfer files via an Ethernet crossover cable.

Another option would be to use LapLink and transfer files over a parallel cable.

The "hard drive option" is still by far the best.

 

[Tannin]

Ha! Serves him right for buying a Dell. If he had gone to a real shop and bought a real computer instead of an overpriced toy, they would have taken care of the whole thing for him. The better places do it at no charge as a routine part of the service.

 

[Tea]

Tannin, you don't have to be rude about it.

(Why not? He bought a Dell didn't he? It's all true, isn't it?)

(Well, yes. But you ztill don't need to be rude.)

(Sorry.)

 

[Clocker]

Thanks for your replies.

Obviously, for people like us who are not afraid to open a box up, transferring the drive is the easiest and fastest way to acheive the goal. However, there are some people who are afraid to open the system just to look at it let along swap out components!

Anyway, I guess I should have been more direct about it. Has anyone tried the file/setting transfer wizard in WinXP via the parallel port cable? Also, you need a special double ended p-port cable...right?

Thanks,
C

 

[Mercutio]

Yes, from old, crappy laptop to new, less crappy laptop.

It was fairly indiscriminant about what it copied, ending up with about 2GB worth of stuff on a 4GB drive, and the transfer was VERY SLOW, once I got the laplink cable to work the way it's suppposed to.

How slow? I think I started the transfer at about 11AM. Wasn't done at 6:30, when I left work.

The end result was it grabbed a LOT of uneeded files, like Temporary Internet Files and some things that were in \windows\temp

Also, laplink "networking" is by no means a brain dead procedure.

If this guy is an idiot - not that there's anything wrong with that - something like AlohaBob's PC Relocator Pro might be a better choice. IIRC it comes with it's own cable.

 

[P5-133XL]

I'm sorry,

I can understand a person being uncomfortable opening up a machine and other more complex computer operations; Some people are just not inclined in that way. However, they need to learn to live with the infirmity and hire someone that has no such limitations.

 

[.Nut]

Anyway, I guess I should have been more direct about it. Has anyone tried the file/setting transfer wizard in WinXP via the parallel port cable?

More importantly here, is his Pentium 90 running WinXP??? Moot point if not.

Also, you need a special double ended p-port cable...right?

Well, you'll need a DB25 <---> DB25 Centronics parallel cable. Otherwise, you'll have to go with RS-232 serial transfers. Places like CompUSA sell "LapLink Cable" kits, which have both parallel and serial cables bound together as a single cable "kit."

 

[mubs]

If he's running Win98/ME on the P90, use a USB flash drive; they'll have drivers for for those OSes. This would really be the easiest.

 

[Mercutio]

A Dell P90 probably doesn't have USB, and you have to open the machine up to put in a card. Might as well grab the hard drive while you're in there...

F&STW makes a "client disk" that can be installed on previous versions of Windows, Mr. Platform sir.

I'd probably charge $75 or so for a transfer for someone like that. If they're so helpless that they can't open the PC up OR take it to someone who will do that, for free, then they're probably overly burdened by all that extra money in their wallets.

 

[Clocker]

Thanks guys. Maybe I'll just go over to his house and do it for him one of these days....He's running Win95 and the P-port transfer sounds like it sucks...big time.

C

 

[Howell]

Thanks guys. Maybe I'll just go over to his house and do it for him one of these days....He's running Win95 and the P-port transfer sounds like it sucks...big time.

C

Naw, Just have him deliver the old computer to you at work. Then you can take it home an burn some CDs for him or something. That is unless he'll deliver both machines to you.

 

[Explorer]

...He's running Win95 and the P-port transfer sounds like it sucks...big time...

Doing parallel port transfers (a.k.a. -- "LapLink") only sucks.

Doing RS-232 SERIAL PORT transfers is what SUCKS BIG TIME.