From TNPC issue #4.20...

Applications: Here to There - Part 3

by T.J. Lee
October 5, 2001

This is the last part in the continuing saga wherein I started out to migrate my working PC's programs and data to a bigger, faster system and my quest for a software solution to make this task easier than manually reinstalling all my applications.

If you remember back in TNPC #4.17 I started this series of articles because a new product from the V Communications folks, who brought us System Commander, intrigued me. Called PC Upgrade Commander this software purports to migrate your data and applications, including the all important registry settings, from one computer to another even if the PCs involved are running different versions of Microsoft Windows.

In this wrap up of the series I'll detail how the different software and brute force techniques finally worked out.

I never did get Upgrade Commander to work. It repeatedly failed at exactly the same spot after first setting up communications between the two PCs (see TNPC #4.18 for the details). The tech support people at V Communications tried mightily to help me get it running but to no avail. One theory was that perhaps the fact that my source PC had two network cards (one for the local network and one for my DSL modem), the transfer software got confused and aborted the migration. Disabling the DSL modem network card didn't solve the problem and neither did trying the beta version of the software they sent me. Keep in mind that V Communications did not write this software, it's something they licensed from someone else so the tech support guys were definitely going uphill although they were nice and really did try to help.

But let me say that I have heard from several TNPCers who have successfully used Upgrade Commander so I'm not saying it would not work for you, it just wouldn't work on my system. Sigh, $40 down the drain.

But the story did not end there. After Part 1 of this series was published I heard from many TNPCers who recommended a program called PC Relocator from an outfit with the unlikely name of Alohabob.

PC Relocator says it can help you migrate everything from one PC to another running the following combination of operating systems:

From Windows 95 to Windows 95
From Windows 95 to Windows 98
From Windows 95 to Windows ME
From Windows 98 to Windows 98
From Windows 98 to Windows ME
From Windows ME to Windows ME

Pricing is currently $39.95 for the electronic download only version or $49.95 for the shipped version. But do keep in mind that the license for PC Relocator states you get one successful relocation for your purchase price. This is a "buy it and use it only once" deal.

PC Relocator worked as advertised. It didn't allow me to move from a source PC running Windows 98 to a target PC running Windows 2000 but I figured I could reconfigure the target PC to Windows 98, relocate everything, then upgrade it to Windows 2000. And it should have worked that way, too. Except that things never go the way they should.

It seems that way back when I installed Windows 2000 in a separate partition on my working (source) computer. I had long since removed that Windows 2000 partition from that computer but as I learned there's removing and then there's really removing. The result was that while PC Relocator dutifully copied everything to the new (target) PC I was unable to upgrade the new machine's operating system to Windows 2000.

The problem is that when you migrate from one PC to another PC (using PC Relocator, Upgrade Commander, or any other of the currently available migration programs) it relocates everything! Data, drivers, applications, every single file comes across. In my case the vestiges of that old Windows 2000 installation that were slipped into the Win98SE partition came across and I learned that you cannot upgrade a machine to Windows 2000 if the Windows 2000 installation routine even thinks Windows 2000 is now or ever was installed on the computer. Flat out won't do it. Fortunately, Lee Hudspeth wrote an article, "Multi-Booting: Field Notes on Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 98", wherein there's great advice on removing, I mean really removing, Windows 2000 from a dual boot PC.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/420/tr.cgi?jim1

So after scrubbing, deleting, and otherwise scraping off all remnants of Windows 2000 from my source PC I was able to use PC Relocator to migrate everything from my old PC to my new PC then upgrade it to Windows 2000. Whew!

Was it worth it? Well, my overall feeling is the same as that which several TNPCers shared with me. Chief Joe, a long time TNPC reader and knowledgeable computer user, summed it up best, "Each machine migrated ran distinctively slower than the same machine with a clean install."

The problem is that when you migrate using the current tools available you get an awful lot of extraneous baggage along with the stuff you actually want to transfer. You get all the flotsam and jetsam that has accumulated in your Registry and when you put it all together, performance suffers. And you cannot yet pick and choose which applications and files get migrated, it's pretty much all or nothing.

My sad conclusion is that the technology is not yet advanced enough to automate program migration between computers. It is still best to keep your programs, updates, and patches and fixes, and when necessary reinstall them from scratch. You have no idea how much it pains me to say that but there's still a long way to go before migration technology can live up to its true potential.

I've wiped my new computer once again and will do the migration the old fashioned way.

You can reach T.J. Lee at:
mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com

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