XP File and Settings transfer Wizard

I am regularly surprised to find that some otherwise computer savvy folks don't yet know about this tool (Accessories -> System Tools). I missed it myself for an astonishing period of time. No doubt the XP installer mentions this in one of the advertising windows it puts up during installs, but who reads those? Well, certainly not us Unix/Linux geeks. After all, we're only doing this XP thing so some unenlightened user can connect to the non-Windows server where the real action is, so why should we pay attention? Sheesh, isn't it bad enough that we have to touch the thing?

Anyway, if you have an old computer, even an old Windows 98 system, this tool lets you transfer files settings to your new XP box. It is actually very well done, allowing you incredible flexibility in how the data will be transferred: you can store it on a network drive, transfer directly across the network, or even (ugh!) put the info on floppies if you have to.

The only problems I've had is in situations where the old system was running Outlook Express and the new one is Outlook or vice versa, and those aren't too difficult to deal with. If the old computer was OE, the Wizard will have transferred to OE on the new box, so just fire it up and export to Outook. If it's the other way around, transfer to OE on the old box BEFORE you run the Wizard. Oh, and activate/register Outlook before running the Wizard on the new box.

That's about it. You can get fancy and pick specific programs to transfer rather than having it just swallow everything it sees, but in general I've found this to work very well.

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