Swapping over computers

[Scarlett]

hello,
I have just got a new computer and I have the job now of swapping everything over onto it. I have an external hard drive where I have saved My Documents, and I will make a list of the programs I want to keep, but do you know what I should do about music I have bought through itunes and napster? Am I right in thinking they are saved in the itunes folder in My Music?
Is there anything else I need to be careful with, else I may lose it in the transfer? I haven't done this before!!

[meredith101]

make a perfect image of the disk (google for tools).
programs need to be INSTALLED to get windows registry to pick them up.

[stevie21]

You won't get any installed programs at all, even with the above advice. You'll just need to reinstall them. In fact, whatever you do, DO NOT take an image of your old C drive and write that to your new one. Your new PC won't work as it'll be expecting to see a particular motherboard & various hardware. It'll have all the drivers for those & they won't work with the actual hardware you have.

If you have an external drive then, really, you shouldn't have anything other than programs on your old C drive. Any music etc. should be on the external drive already

[Scarlett]

Thanks Stevie- that's what I thought. All my music and stuff should be in My Documents, no? Do you know what I can do about Realplayer? I have a ton of stuff in my library there, and surely I will lose that?

[stevie21]

Anything in Real Player's library should, ideally, be on the external hard drive.

If all of your music is in the "My Music" folder on your C drive then (while no other programs are running that may be using this folder such as an image editor or music player) right click on the My Documents folder on your desktop. Choose Properties and then from the "Target" tab choose "Move". Move it to your external drive.

This way you can continue to save things to "My Documents", "My Music", "My Pictures" etc. but in the background your PC will be saving these to the external drive instead.