Normally, the articles that appear in Logical Tips also appear in our local newspaper on Sundays. However, due to a small snafu, the newspaper and I appear to be out of sync. So for those of you locals who notice these things, here’s an extra article that won’t be in the paper.
It comes from a reader response I got after the article on losing Balloon Tips in XP. He seemed mortally offended that I would suggest anyone edit the registry. Frankly, I think most people can handle it these days, since it’s not new news. But he suggested people take a look at the XP built-in Files and Settings Transfer Wizard as an alternative.
I believe I’ve already written about it, but just in case some folks missed it, you can use this tool with all Windows operating systems from Windows 95 to present. Basically, you use your Windows XP CD on the old system to run a program that saves all your files and settings so you can transfer them to a new computer. The saved file includes such information as Outlook and Outlook Express messages, although not the software itself (which you should install fresh on the new machine). The other thing it doesn’t save is your passwords, for obvious security reasons. Once you have your file, you can then burn it on a CD-R or put it on a network drive, so you can transfer the information to the new system.
For more information you can check out this KnowledgeBase article from Microsoft.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;293118