I have a friend who is an MIT grad, IT industry person and he tells me
all the time that he has no idea how the consumer ever manages a PC and
Windows. I agree with him 100%. My son is a senior in college. He and
his friends won't touch a Windows system. I just lost a HD on my
machine. I decided NOT to upgrade to WIN 7. I'm still struggling with
loading drivers, getting things back to where they were, etc. A
complete nightmare. Weren't computers supposed to make our lives
easier????? :))
Steve, N4JQQ
On 2/11/2013 8:47 AM, Kim Elmore wrote:
I've dreaded the inevitable upgrade form XP to Win 7 (and is despise
the user interface on Win 8). XP is stable, does what I want and is a
known quantity -- I've gotten passably good at dealing with it over
the years. I've learned how to repair XP installations in-place using
what I've heard called "the hat trick," and so I've been happy. I
don't like upgrading the OS: it's always dicey. Years ago, I started
out running NT and used the option Microsoft offered that allowed
in-place upgrades. I went from NT to 2000 and then to XP, all in
place. I've always had backups and cloned disks available, just in
case anything went badly, but I was always careful and it always went
well. I've had everything set up just like I wanted it for years and
so keeping it that way is a big time-saver. Besides, I have some
applications I like but for which the media was long ago lost -- like
the Eudora 7.1 mail client that I'm using now.
Alas, all good things come to an end and so it is with XP. WHen
support and hot fixes end, the system will slowly become vulnerable
and, sooner or later, any new applications won't run under it. But, I
really didn't want to reinstall everything, especially since I can't
because I no longer have the media (or a floppy drive :). So, I
decided to try a program one of the IT guys told me about at work
called PCMover.
I've always kept my application installations on a separate partition
(in the old days, it was a separate disk), so I figured I'm set up to
avoid some of the gotchas in Win 7. With some of my IT friend's help,
I had successfully migrated form XP to Win 7 (64) at work, so I
figured there was a good chance I could do this at home. Becuase my
system has a traceable history back to NT, there were some subtleties
to handle (the system was partially in C:\WINNT not completely in
C:\Windows).
The process consists mainly of manipulating registry entries and goes
pretty fast (I used the "PCMover Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant"). I even
recovered (mostly) my desktop configuration! The test was to see if
DXBase made it and I'm happy to say it did! It had lost all prior
references to my data base, but I copied those form my still-extant XP
system (booted from a separate disk) and, sure enough, DXBase is fine
(I'm running 2007 v1.09).
But some other non-DXBase necessities needed attention. For example,
all of the USB-to-RS232 devices needed driver updates, including a
PCIe to high speed serial card I have. Once the new drivers were
installed I re-set all of my COM port numbers and speeds for my
various ham-related programs and devices and I was done. Of course, I
also reinstalled various other drivers for my graphics card and
motherboard, and I have yet to reinstall my Silex wireless printer
server on this system, but everything else seems to work fine.
I have no interest of any kind in PCMover or LapLink; I'm simply a
satisfied customer. It's not perfect and it's not seamless, but it did
what I wanted, both here at home and at work. I wouldn't recommend it
if you're not comfortable digging about your operating system. If
you're conversant with XP, WIn 7 isn't all that different and if you
ant to retain your current installed programs, I recommend you give it
a try. Of course, keep a clone (not merely a backup) of your current
system so you can immediately go back to what works if anything goes
wrong or need time for extended fiddling with the new OS.
73,
N5OP
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