Moving to a New PC

LawMRE · 12-21-2009, 10:01 AM

Hello

I have bought a new computer. The new one has 1 500gb hard drive which has Windows 7 installed as its OS.
My current computer is XP. It has 2 hard drives, a 180 gb and a 300gb.

I would like to know the problems and possibilities in terms of moving programs and files in general, but my main problem is with the files.
I plan to physically move the 300gb hard drive from my old pc into my new one. All it has on it is music and films. It is almost full.
What I am not sure about is what to do with the 180gb one. I plan to continue using the old pc so I must leave this hard drive in it, but it has a lot of programs i want to move to my new pc - games and general software. It is almost full.

What should I do? Do I simply move all the files I have installed personally on the old hard drive (leaving ones that came with the pc which i bought from Mesh [it had all the basics installed with XP] on the hard drive) to the new one? I do not know if there are compatibility issues and what I can and cannot move.

It would be annoying to have to reinstall everything onto the new hard drive, but Saved Games from the various gaming applications i have on this computer are much harder to replace, what do I do about these?
I heard there may be registry issues or something with moving things.

Can anyone advise me on what to do please?

**Old Rich** · 12-21-2009, 10:08 AM

and welcome to the Forum

Files are easy to move . . just copy to the new drive. Programs, on the other hand, must be reinstalled ( with a few exceptions )

LawMRE · 12-21-2009, 02:27 PM

yeah i know files are ok.

what about saved games? i assume i cant just copy/paste whole program files then

**Old Rich** · 12-21-2009, 02:36 PM

very few programs can just be copied over . . most require Registry entries be created with a installation process

LawMRE · 12-22-2009, 07:43 AM

oh, sorry, i mean SAVES as in, actual save files (i think they are .sav). e.g. a file which has been created by the "save game" option in an application. not sure of your experience with gaming but for example, a save in this instance would be a record created by you in order to return to a specific point in a game where you have "saved".
can i move these?
thanks!

**Old Rich** · 12-22-2009, 07:58 AM

I would think so, but I am not a gamer at all