Transferring Systems - In with the New out with the Old
Having just bought a brand new PC, I thought I would share with you the fun and games that I have had getting my new machine to have my old PC's data, and yes, it WAS fun and frustrating!
You know the feeling. The doorbell rings and standing there in very large boxes is your new PC. The temptation is to rip open the boxes, plug it in and fire it up, but I resisted and thought I would do this properly - for once!
One thing I did notice is that packing was rather clever. Rather than try lifting heavy PC gear out of the box, a series of plastic clips meant the lid could be lifted off, giving you full access to the unit inside.
After removing the machine from its cardboard tomb and hooking it up (which was so easy on account of the colour coded cables - green cable into green socket and so on), within minutes I was ready to switch on. I promptly left it and went and made a cup of tea. Why?
When electrical goods are brought into the home from a cold outside, it is advisable to leave them for a while so that they can "acclimatise" to their surroundings. If they are damp, there is a risk of causing electrical damage!
One pot of tea later and I was ready for the big switch on. New PC's these days come preformatted and loaded so I was intrigued to find out what was on my new PC. Shortly after several whirrs and clicks, Windows 95 was loading.
Now starts the fun!
First off, I had to install a printer driver (a small program that talks to my printer). This wasn't as straightforward as it should have been as Windows wanted to install there and then but the disks wanted you to run set-up. No problem - I just cancelled the printer installation. Windows wasn't entirely happy with this, as it had detected a piece of hardware that it had no driver for.
Having got through that, the next stage was to run the video driver installation to take advantage of the "special" features that my system (and particularly my monitor) had to offer. That was simplicity itself! Once done, I was looking at new, sparkling desktop!
One of the key features of Windows 95 is the ability to customise things and this was the next stage. The place to do this is in the Control Panel as it is here that most settings can be looked at and amended.
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