New box. Next step

take a look at

A huge time saver to install all those must have utilities and it automatically prevents unwanted "free" extra software from being installed.

When I tested PCtrans "free", all it did, was list the program it thought you wanted to transfer. It got the list wrong! And that's all the "free" one does, is list the programs to be transferred and then it quits. You are not "served a free lunch", it solves no problems.

There are three brands of software that do the same thing. The software is rented. You pay as much as you'd pay to *buy* some other utility, yet you're only *renting* it.

The reason for the pricing, is these products are backed up by Tech Support. Say you run PCTrans, and 29 of 30 programs transfer over. You can have their Tech Support remote into your machine, and fix it so the 30th one comes in. That's why the product approach is so expensive.

I don't know enough about the user profile transfer aspect, to comment. For example, they could transfer your Downloads folder, which would be dead simple. But would moving the contents of AppData make sense ? Perhaps your email folder is hiding down there somewhere.

In your case, you may be trying to move 32-bit programs to a 64-bit machine. That should work, as the Windows On Windows subsystem can do that. The PCTrans in that case, has to know that Program Files content is to be transferred to "Program Files (x86)". In addition, some of the Registry goods are likely to need movement between dissimilar places. This is not as easy as it sounds.

Sorry I cannot give you any batting averages to go on (happy vs unhappy customers). You might try a Google, enter the product name and "review" and see if you can track down a review.

Paul

There are password managers which run on Windows. You still need to remember one password, of course... but then presumably you still need one to get into Google.

Me also. I trust Google about as far as I can throw their headquarters building.

According to Wiki, Turnpike works only on 32 bit Windows, and there wasn't a Linux version.

TB will certainly do mail and news, though I gave up on it a few years back over its glacial speed.

That looks handy. Ta!

Sympathy is worth something:-) I take your point about the freeware.

I don't do Windows, but I'd have thought the thing to do would be to first set up a temporary administrator user. Do the same on the old machine.

Login as that user on the old machine, then copy C:\Users\yourname to a USB stick/hard drive. That should get all your old files.

Login as the temporary user on the new machine. Create a new 'yourname' user on the new machine (give it the same password as the old), plug in the USB stick, and copy the files to C:\Users\yourname, replacing any files that happen to be there with the same name.

Then login to the new user and see if all your settings are in place.

I'd install the programs from scratch, rather than trying to copy them over. A lot of the programs may be outdated, and a fresh install will get the current, Win11 friendly, versions.

Theo

Windows Easy Transfer would be the closest thing to a manual sequence. But it's gone. This is a tool that doesn't move programs, but it was supposed to move settings (likely via registry manipulation). It might come close to moving a profile.

Paul

ok

not really a problem - it runs ok under 64 bit windows. (16 bit takes a little bit more effort)

Much depends on what you want to achieve...

If it is "shift your files over, and then carry on with similar but perhaps not exactly the same software / versions", then it is really just a case of installing apps, and copying data (be that on a LAN, vie USB drive / thumb drive etc).

If you want to preserve everything "as was" then it might be simpler to suck the entire previous machine into a virtual machine and run that on the new one!

If it was retained in a VM, then the only space it would take would be on your SSD.

Ok John. That sounds reassuring.

Progress so far has been to couple up the new box and install available versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, Chrome, Google Earth etc. The

Turnpike has served me well since 1995 but perhaps this is the moment to move on and try the T Bird version.

Most software should work on your new box if kept up to date.

For apps that don't there is VirtualBox. Where you can install any OS, of any vintage including Linux on your new PC.

What version?

Later ones (but before they pissed everyone off by moving to a subscription only model) are "activated" on up to two machines. So if you are going to use it on a new machine, you may need to use the "deactivate" option on the help menu of the Win 7 box to allow it to reinstall.

(worth noting that the CS2 versions of the entire Adobe suite are in effect available without needing activation... they turned off the activation servers for that many years ago, and then got a huge response from existing users unable to reinstall. So they published updated versions including a special key that allowed it to install already activated. Needles to say, that got out of hand very quickly :-)

Don't think there was a Linux version... so Windows Subsystem for Linux is not going to help here.

It would be pretty easy to install Win 7 32 bit on a virtual machine, and then run turnpike in that...

Is your Win 11 Home or Pro?

If pro, then Hyper-V is preinstalled - you just need to turn it on. With home it needs a little tweaking first[1] to perk it into life.

(you could also use VirtualBox - free download - easy to use, but does not integrate as easily into windows IME for things like clipboard sharing and control of screen resolutions. Also things like having it hibernate and restart VMs when you shut the host machine down and restart it)

How safe is it to run W7, even inside a virtual machine? W10 has a 32 bit version, but I'm not convinced it will run 16 bit software.

If the only thing that can get compromised is the OP's usenet agent, that's not a big problem. But, if he's using Turnpike for email as well, that's a problem.

I think that is what other Turnpike afficionados do.

Pass. Not noticeably mentioned in the sales blurb. I guess it had commercial/office use in a previous life. If you tell me how to find out, I'll try. I have some technical help coming later in the week and may know more then. Win 11 may have been installed by the re-furbisher to add sales value.

Be useful if there is a way of sharing the one display screen.

There were long threads on this at the time (Stunnel?). I decided to jump ship and have been happy with Thunderbird until the 115 debacle.

Elements 7 I seem to remember parting with some money at the time!

Rarely used as I don't do much photography.

:-)

If using it for a single purpose, and it has its firewall on, then it should be fairly safe.

I have seen this touted as one option:

It ought not be easy for a compromised Win 7 VM to affect the host machine. At the virtual Win 7 box can always reset to a checkpoint. Usenet after all will still be out there with a message history.

Elements and 'Proper' photoshop are two entirely separate products !

I have Elements V9 bought in 2011 and it still runs on Xp, Vista and Win 7. Comes with 2 dvds, one for windows and one for Mac Os.

Probably pro then...

Push windows key, type system - it should suggest the system information app - click that. Top of the list :-)

(or right click on "this PC" and chose properties off the popup menu)

Possibly - or if it was a 10 box originally it upgraded itself to 11.

You can run the VM in a window, or full screen. Or you can talk to it over a network using the remote desktop client (or any other remote control app). So could use another PC (or tablet, or phone, or raspberry pi - basically anything that can run a RDP client) as a way of using it.