Backup advice please
 

Hi all,

My 4 y.o. laptop has developed a charging problem, the charging icon flashes on and off, the 19 volt plug to the lappy gets hot and not a lot battery charging happening. There is a problem with the internal charging circuit. Time for a new computer..
Other than the obvious, photo's, documents etc etc, what other data/ files should I make sure I backup? The harddrive (40Gb) is fine.

If I buy a new laptop, is it possible/ straight forward to transfer the entire contents of the old one to the new harddrive to make an exact replica of my existing machine? I'm happy with what I already have and its performance (Win XP SP2) since I only write documents and surf the web. I don't want to go with Vista.

Any advice appreciated,

Cheers

Octane

You might get away with transferring the hard drive from the old to the new laptop, but you will probably have some "challenges" along the way, in particular for the video and sound drivers. If there's any "manufacturer proprietary" stuff on the old laptop, that may get the hump, too. The XP installation may complain and ask you to revalidate - not a problem if you have the COA and documentation.

If that doesn't work, I'd be inclined to buy a new laptop (without an operating system, unless you plan to keep the old one), install the XP etc from your present laptop, then copy your documents etc across.

You could even buy a HD caddy, and put the old machine's HD in that, to use as an external drive for the new laptop.

XP has a feature called 'Transfer my settings' or something similar. I've never used it but I remember it being a selling point when XP was advertised. I think it was supposed to be the answer to just the sort of situation you face.

As to transferring HDDs from one machine to another, watch out for Windows being tied to the BIOS of your current maachine. You may end up having to buy a copy of XP anyway.

Probably. Or the battery pack's expired. But there's a small chance the sensing/reporting contacts on the pack or computer are dirty. You could try polishing them up a little with a wedge of paper or a toothpick.

Don't rely on this alone - you will be disappointed! Also, it only works for the currently logged-in user, so you have to run it for every user account.

Putting it into an external caddy is what I have done several times!

SD

Before you buy a new laptop make sure the hardware is compatible with XP if that is the OS you intend to use.

My wife bought a new computer with Vista and she hated it so much that I installed XP pro on it for her. Finding drivers was nearly impossible and some work-arounds were needed since the motherboard did not support XP.

Bill Gates always tries to get his way.

Another possible route ...
 

... is to make a backup using Acronis True Image from your existing laptop, then recover the backup image to your new laptop. Acronis claim that this will sort out your problem - but I have never had to try it in anger myself!

You should also note that a lot of laptops actually have two partitions on the hard drive - the one partition being for your OS, applications and your data, and the other (much smaller and usually FAT32 as opposed to NTFS) containing laptop specific tools - this you won't need to transfer.

But before doing anything, I would have the battery checked out - a new battery will be a lot cheaper than a new laptop (although not by as much as you might like! I had an existing battery fitted with new cells which saved me some bread (note this is not something you want to try yourself because most laptop batteries have a built in microprocessor which may need to be re-set).

Slightly different subject - acebaxter - would you care to share what make of laptop you had problems with? I am faced with a similar dilemma on a new Lenovo running Vista Home (so no roll back to XP permitted by Microsoft) and I'm also a tad leary about drivers for the DVD writer ...

That would only work if the two PCs are virtually identical - there's bound to be different drivers involved for different hardware.

At best you will spend a long time changing drivers and at worst you will get nothing but blue screens.

SD

It's not a laptop. It's a Compaq desktop machine. If you have the exact model number of your machine you can usually google it and find a site that tells you the motherboard make and specs. I would doubt the dvd would be a problem but a search of the make and model shouldn't be that hard to do.

We didn't do any kind of rollback. Just a total reformat of the hard drive and a clean install of a new operating system. There are workarounds for some of the issues. But I did learn the hard way, better to research the motherboard and chipset first. We finally got her's up and running on xp pro. The wife is happy now and won't be using vista for a long time. Microsoft is going to stop producing xp in order to push the vista transition. Next payday I think I'm going to order 3 copies of xp pro just to have for future builds and upgrades.

Buy one of these. The proverbial db's!

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=275561

GS

I bought a new laptop last month. Same brand (IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad) but a much later model. I've had Thinkpads since they first appeared on the market, and never (yet) been disappointed with them.

The new one came with XP Pro and nowt else of importance. I installed all the other software I had for the old machine, connected both to the home network, and transferred over all my "stuff". I'd guess that took me a couple of hours in total (I have a lot of aviation and ecclesiastical stuff on it). Then I wiped the old one back to "XP Pro only" and presented it to my daughter and her husband to be the "onboard computer" for their catamaran.

They're very happy, I'm very happy, and everything works OK. I doubt it would have been as easy moving hard drives, since the new one has a lot of detail spec differences from the old one.

Can I just re-inforce the earlier comment by someone that it might be the battery at fault.

I've a laptop that recently started misbehaving much as you describe.

A new battery now has it back to it's old self :D


Surely worth the £50 or so before splashing out on a new laptop and trying to shift everything.