Pretty darn good update and emergency program

Some of you are aware of the problems I have been experiencing with
Windows-10 the past few months. This finally culminated in a
completely borked system that would not even allow me to install a new
Win-10 from an 1803 ISO CD. (Dell helped me fix that part).

Anyhow, it had taken me a VERY long time (think months) to get Win-10
running my necessary and desired programs satisfactorily.

Just before the final demise, I received an email from easeUS (I use
their backup software) about their new program PCTrans. This is to
save all your program, data, and settings to reinstall in case of
getting a new computer, upgrading the OS (that's me), etc.

I bought it. Since my system was getting more and more flaky, I did a
complete backup and also created the PCTrans image to a USB drive. I
also placed the installers for both the backup software and the
PCTrans software on that drive, with text files containing the
registration codes for each.

Bing! No boot, etc on the system. Installed 1803 (back up made), ran
Update to bring it to current (made backuo) and ran PCTrans to recover
files, data, settings, etc.

I admit I had to return to this point three times as I learned what I
should should and shouldn't allow PCTrans to restore (not much
documentation is an understatement).

But the third time I got ALL my old programs working, complete with
the data. Only a couple things required reinstall. Those, I believe,
were using some kind of protection scheme. However reinstall started
them up again, WITH old data. Some programs installed, but I had to
recreate their desktop icons.

This all took 8 hours, including 6 more backups along the way (just in
case, you know). Sure beats weeks!

-dan z-


--
Someone who thinks logically provides
a nice contrast to the real world.
(Anonymous)

On 1 Aug 2018 10:04:59 GMT, slate_leeper wrote:

But the third time I got ALL my old programs working

Glad you got it all working.

In January, a MS update bricked my system so badly it wouldn't boot and
even Microsoft couldn't fix it at the local center (I left it there for 3
days).

Luckily the disk was fine, where the only thing that matters is:
a. Data
b. Installers

Since I keep them completely separate from the operating system, they were
safe (but a lot of work to re-configure the operating system).

Previously I published the list of about 60 things that need to be done to
configure Windows 10 BEFORE you even install any programs!

slate_leeper wrote:
Some of you are aware of the problems I have been experiencing with
Windows-10 the past few months. This finally culminated in a
completely borked system that would not even allow me to install a new
Win-10 from an 1803 ISO CD. (Dell helped me fix that part).

Anyhow, it had taken me a VERY long time (think months) to get Win-10
running my necessary and desired programs satisfactorily.

Just before the final demise, I received an email from easeUS (I use
their backup software) about their new program PCTrans. This is to
save all your program, data, and settings to reinstall in case of
getting a new computer, upgrading the OS (that's me), etc.

I bought it. Since my system was getting more and more flaky, I did a
complete backup and also created the PCTrans image to a USB drive. I
also placed the installers for both the backup software and the
PCTrans software on that drive, with text files containing the
registration codes for each.

Bing! No boot, etc on the system. Installed 1803 (back up made), ran
Update to bring it to current (made backuo) and ran PCTrans to recover
files, data, settings, etc.

I admit I had to return to this point three times as I learned what I
should should and shouldn't allow PCTrans to restore (not much
documentation is an understatement).

But the third time I got ALL my old programs working, complete with
the data. Only a couple things required reinstall. Those, I believe,
were using some kind of protection scheme. However reinstall started
them up again, WITH old data. Some programs installed, but I had to
recreate their desktop icons.

This all took 8 hours, including 6 more backups along the way (just in
case, you know). Sure beats weeks!

-dan z-

When I tried the Easeus product, it couldn't even
properly classify and list the installed software
on my computer properly. (That's operation in Free mode,
where they show you what they would propose to transport,
without doing anything.) I can't see me spending good
money to find out how it all ends :-\ I can tell just
by looking at that displayed information, it's a disaster
waiting to happen.

There are several products for moving an environment
from one computer to another. And the high prices for
the software, would make me have a very high expectation
for results. Half a solution would be no solution
at all. I can always reinstall all my software, bring
over the email profiles, my bookmarks, and achieve
the same results. If I'm going to pay money,
I want to see perfection. Not "we're still writing
this software" or "we're working on it". Not
"phone our Tech Support and they'll walk you
through some bizarre manual steps". We don't want
to throw in a Benjamin, just to have a Tech Support
read off a script to us.

I'm glad you got out the other side, alive... :-)

Paul