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PC Relocator works providing the new PC has the same of later operating system. Both my PC’s turned out to have exactly the same system (yet to install SP2). Do not think you can transfer your old Windows operating system files it will not do that, you need to have a working copy of Windows on both PC’s.

First install PC Relocator on the old PC and follow the prompts, it wants to check for a later version but on mine I had to do this manually as I think the link has changed. Next plug in the cable there is a choice of three the fastest will be a network cable. I used the mid speed option a special USB offering. The slowest by far is parallel.

Now install the software on the new PC and then reboot, you then need to restart the program and the first PC finds the connection once you have plugged in the cable. Here there are a number of options but just choose the defaults, you are then told what programs will be transferred what could be transferred and what will not. This is the time to get rid of what you no longer use, all those programs that never uninstalled correctly etc. It then asks permission to close down all other running programs and processes. Remember this will include your Anti Virus and Firewall so do close your Internet connection, for some reason this is not automatically closed.

See also: Utility software

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Only one program would not transfer Zone Alarm my Firewall package so that needs to be installed separately before I connect to the Internet. Now I proceed and am told the 19GB of files – or at least what it deems I need – including vital things like custom settings and all data files as well as Outlook files etc will take six hours to transfer and configure. Almost as soon as it starts moving files this figure drops to three hours and forty minutes, although it jumped about a bit this figure seemed to stay approximately correct for around an hour. The final figure turned out to be three hours twenty four minutes, the average transfer rate over the USB (version 2) was around 650KB/s. Then it does the gluing together what it calls ‘Combining Database’ which is updating the registry, up to this point the whole operation can be cancelled. This took another ten minutes.

Throughout the process both the PC’s told you what was being transferred with the new PC giving the time elapsed and remaining. It will not install any system files however things like True Type Fonts get added if the old machine had fonts that are not on the new machine.

If you just wish to transfer a couple of your applications then just untick everything else, this operation would take only a few minutes.

As regular readers will know I am a ‘belt – braces – and safety pin person’ so why not set a Windows System Restore point on both machines before running the package and then if the worst happens then you are no worse off. Any tinkering with the Registry is rather like walking over live rails and has risks. This package minimises them.

The package did what it said and the special USB cable supplied made the time taken tolerable. However as most of us only upgrade around every two years you are not likely to use it that often. They do allow – encourage – you to upgrade to the latest version of the software for no charge, so that is helpful. As previously stated the change of a new system with no garbage is a nice feeling, it will probably work a lot quicker so there is still something to be said for installing from scratch. However can you find all the master discs to do this? For weeks after you will probably be tinkering with setting to get back exactly what you had before. Is life just to short?

I now find that in the UK and Europe you will not be able to buy the special USB cable version, so if you wanted that you would have to buy it from the USA at just under $70. The two versions available here contain either the ECP Parallel cable or the fastest the crossover network version. www.amazon.co.uk have both versions at £24 or £48. The software I reviewed was that supplied in the £48 version.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=software-uk&field-keywords=Pc%20relocator/ref=xs_ap_sai2_xgl/202-1960655-9395060