I’ve finally bitten the bullet and decided to replace my existing ancient Dell tower PC with a reconditioned HP desktop. It’s ages since I have done this so any advice welcome. Obviously I’ve backed everything up to OneDrive and an external drive.
Particular concerns:
1. Moving Outlook – not losing contacts, folders, old mail etc- I dimly remember there’s a data folder somewhere? it would be nice if the accounts could move too
2. iTunes – I have an ancient version to avoid Apple upgrade trauma as my still functioning iPod is probably no longer supported. Is there a better alternative now?
3. Separate logins for me and the Mrs. Currently we just use mine which means my OneDrive etc is peppered with Mrs. T’s documents, scans, images etc which it is fair to say she doesn’t have much of a structure for. objective is I separate then then all her stuff will be on her OneDrive away from mine. Can you share applications across different logins eg the banking software etc?
4. Can you just connect the two machines together and copy everything over? USB? Ethernet?
Advice, war stories gratefully received.
The basics of moving from one Microsoft PC to another can be done pretty much automatically if say going from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Trickier from older versions.
All of your Outlook stuff and stuff from any other Microsoft apps should be transferable over without snags. Microsoft used to have software specifically for moving their apps from an old PC to a new one. With third party apps you’ll need to consult their help files to see what needs to be saved and where.
Separating out the stuff your missus has accumulated on your login will probably have to be done by hand, unfortunately, and I would have thought sharing banking software for a single account across two different logins could be tricky, but maybe there is provision in the software for joint accounts to go on both party’s login.
You could find that your ancient iTunes may not work at all on Windows 11, particularly if it’s a 16-bit version, because Windows 11 won’t run anything 16-bit now. That’s also assuming that you kept the installer from when you put it onto your old PC. The installer may well be no longer available, if you don’t have it.
MusicBee seems to be the free music playing/management software that all the experts recommend. I tried it a few years back and found it very good indeed, with a little bit of a learning curve, but I preferred my paid-for MediaMonkey software that I’ve been using for many years.
Best of luck.
Running 16 bit software on any recent 32 or 64 bit OS can be done but is not straightforward – I use a VM to run some 16 bit stuff that really wants to be run on NT4, but its a faff.
Yeah, saying FOff to iTunes is very tempting though I do still use the iPod so maybe it’s media monkey for me.
Am I right @Mike_H Media Monkey talks to iPods?
It does, yes.
https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHelp:iPod_Synchronization/5.0
I use MediaMonkey these days.
I had to really, once the electo-convulsive therapy and PTSD recovery had finished after using iTunes for years.
Bloody awful user interface mind, it’s really ghastly to look at.
You can skin it can’t you?
16-bit software is ancient – from the Windows 3.1 and 95 era. You’re unlikely to be running anything that old these days. An old version of iTunes will be 32-bit.
There was still some 16-bit software kicking about in the WinXP-Win7 days but yes, it was old hat and it’s not going to be iTunes.
Last time I did it, albeit ages ago now… laptops last much longer than they used to.. I managed to use a free version of Laplink. It made the process fairly easy and lots of stuff got moved over and organised as I had it on my old machine. I don’t use Outlook so I don’t know about that but you used to have to export and import .pst files.
Have you also considered moving the hard drive in the old system to the new one to use it as a data drive and make copying everything over much easier/quicker?
There used to be a free piece of Windows software in the Windows XP/Windows 7 days called Files And Settings Transfer Wizard, but it only worked for transferring M$ software and it’s long gone now.
This looks like the definitive answer now.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-transfer-everything-from-one-windows/44391715-e9cc-4124-af4f-bbfe9f15ad7c
Have you tried moving your Outlook online? If it’s a relatively recent version you might be able to migrate it onto the Outlook.com platform – ‘web mail’ basically, rather than having the client app only on your own device. That way you might be able to migrate accounts/contacts/email history etc onto the online version, which you will be able to access from any new machine – essentially by browser – as long as you have the logon credentials to hand. I’ve never done that myself, as I abandoned Outlook a long time ago, but I think it might be an option worth investigating.
It’s bang up to date as I have Windows 365 but it’s a good point, I’ll check everything is there in the cloud.
Outlook is a bit pony and maybe I’ll just abandon it but I do like a downloaded copy.
Mind you the entire history is there on BT mail too though I’ve never been quite sure the folder structures map over properly. Might dig in before I do the move.
If you settle on the online Outlook.com, you can still keep a local email client like Thunderbird and use that to download the email traffic you want to stash locally.
All you need to do is to set up an Account(s) in Thunderbird that mirrors the online one, with the same logon details. Use the online version by default, then, if you want to keep summat locally, fire up Thunderbird and grab what you want from the 365 IMAP account.
You might even be able to set up forwarding on the online Outook.com account and use a different Thunderbird identity (twangstash@outlook.com) to automatically receive copies of everything sent to the 365 account?
Do you have a Microsoft Account?
recently bought a new PC, and whilst I can’t remember actually telling Microsoft to do anything, when I switched the new one on it went away and pulled everything in (Outlook, contacts, Edge favourites, passwords, payment details etc).
I shelled out for a hard drive expecting as dose of pain in setting stuff up, plus scribbling many notes and reminders of website favourites and passwords, but it was really a piece of p*ss
(maybe I was just lucky)
Only downside now is that I login to Microsoft Account using a PIN – I think I can still remember the actual password that I need if I’m not on my home PC
I think that thing with your Microsoft Account on a new PC only works with Microsoft software (Office, Edge, Microsoft Pay etc. and relies on you having it all backed-up in their cloud service. Anything non-M$ has to be done “by other means”.
Luckily for me, when I changed PCs (twice last year – 2 laptops replaced with mini-PCs) the only thing I had any real difficulty with was my music library. Trying to retain several years Play History took some headscratching and jiggery-pokery with old backup files and was only about 70% successful.
Yeah I do have the Microsoft account set up and also use Edge as the default browser just to have a bit of non Google territory so maybe it’ll be easier.
Further to johnw’s suggestion above, I am a big fan of user data on a different drive to the OS and apps. A 250GB SSD costs bugger all nowadays and is more than enough for Windows and apps.
The ‘OS’ SSD in my PC died after about 10 years, I just lifted the ‘data’ SSD into another machine and off it went (with a few hours of fettling and reinstalling apps).
I need to do it again fairly soon as my main PC is W10 and Offspring the Younger has an ex-gaming W11 PC in the spare room. He built an even faster one at Easter…
This. Always use a boot drive SSD for Windows and put everything else on a separate data drive (or multiple drives). Makes problem solving and reinstalls much easier down the line.
I’d go 500gb these days – even the big name ones are all well under £50.
My current tower has exactly this. Two drives, one for the OS and one for data plus I have an external 1Tb SSD for backups. I’ll deffo replicate it with the new one.
Out of interest, which drive do you prefer?
I’m wondering if I could install another drive in the case. Anyone know? This is it
HP EliteDesk 800 G2 SFF Quad Core i5-6500 16GB DDR4 256GB SSD WiFi Windows 10 Professional Desktop PC Computer (Renewed) https://amzn.eu/d/9pM7Abq
Those things have very little space inside beyond what they are designed to ship with – I doubt very much you’ll be able to stuff another one in there! It’s pretty similar to my everyday PC here – mine’s a Dell equivalent; 6 series i5 and 16Gb of RAM. I keep mine attached to a couple of 6Tb externals – read speed isn’t an issue for over 90% of my needs. Sitting next to it is a fat roaring monster for when I need to do proper gnarly stuff. Or play Days Gone.
There appears to be an M.2 slot on the motherboard so it would probably support 2 drives but I can’t work out if they can both be used at the same time.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the wrong spec pc for me so it’s going back and I’ll think again. Very useful thread, thanks all!
I was looking at a mini pc and might reconsider that option.
https://www.techradar.com/best/mini-pcs#section-best-mini-pc-on-a-budget
Just for benchmrking… I bought one of these last year https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09V81NML4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It does everything I want it to but that is frankly not very much because it’s my MP3 file server. If you plan to use yours as a general purpose PC (and it looks like it is your plan) then you need one a bit faster. This one came with a 500G M.2 SSD fitted and I just took the 500G SATA data drive out of my previous file server PC plugged it in above the M.2 drive and I was back up and running in no time.
What makes the difference do you think? More RAM, different chip, SSD your etc? I’m at the outer limits of tech knowledge now!
The main thing is the CPU. All these beelink boxes have enough memory. I only have two applications running most of the time and it’s nowhere near as fast as my 8 year old i7 laptop that has less memory.
Indeed, it’s the N100 processor – they’re fairly limited in performace despite their specs. They’re designed to run without the need for a cooling fan, after all.
This is one that I bought earlier this year from Amazon. Very happy with it.
Beelink SER5 Pro Mini PC. AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor, 16GB ram, 500GB SSD, AMD Radeon Graphics 8 Cores 1900MHz, Windows 11 Pro.
£379 (was £349 when I bought)
There’s a couple of caveats when purchasing cheap PCs from an unknown manufacturer.
Firstly make sure the device comes with Windows 11 and not Windows 10. Windows 10 is only being supported for another year – from then onwards security updates are only supplied to commercial customers with valid update licenses.
Secondly some of the lesser manufacturers ship these devices loaded with a Volume License copy of Windows, against Microsoft’s license terms, and at the same time disable Windows update completely to stop the device ‘phoning home’. Which means that these devices won’t pick up any security updates, and won’t accept a reload of Windows without purchasing a valid license key.
I always stick with Crucial or Samsung. Always cost a few quid more but I had too many fails with cheaper discs over the years.
I’d also recommend M.2 MVNe if your mainboard will take it
I know this is moving a little further from the OP but, as you say, drives fail. Even Samsung SSDs – I recently had a 2TB data drive die in under a year. More important than the monetary cost is the data that’s lost as a result if it’s not backed up. If I had a drive budget, I’d make sure I included a backup drive (probably external) even if it means buying a slightly lower spec main drive.
I too learned the value of having backup drives the hard way.
I now have external USB drives for backup and I check them regularly with Crystal Disk Info, which is a reliable free Windows program that warns you if your HDDs and SSDs are starting to fail. One of my 4TB backup drives is currently in a “Caution” state as there are a handful of “Uncorrectable Sectors” on it, though no data has been lost yet. Windows “CheckDisk” gave it a clean bill of health yesterday, after a very lengthy full check, but I will replace it soon just the same.
Oh, yes and I am completely anal about backing up. I use Carbonite for an off-site back up and have an large external USB drive as well AND all my music is on a NAS with redundancy as well.
You can’t back up too much, especially when ALL you music is digital.
(I might change the Carbonite soon – they are currently offering so many discounts that I wonder if they are in trouble? Plenty of alternatives out there and (without a discount) less expensive)
I agree but it’s easier said than done with a laptop. I’m about to replace my 8 year old HP Envy which has an M.2 drive and a SATA drive. I can’t find a modern equivalent.