Bringing settings over from XP

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Guest

I've got XP SP2 on one partition, and have installed Vista Beta 2 on another.
When I was using XP, I'd install all my programs on a third partition, so no
programs were actually intalled to the Windows partition. As such I would've
thought it logical that I could access those programs on this unbiased
partition with Vista just as I could with XP, but such doesn't seem to be the
case. Authentication with programs such as Photoshop or iTunes aren't going
through, my bookmarks and account settings aren't loading for things like
Firefox and Thunderbird, et cetera.

I tried to take a look at the Vista Compatibility Wizard, but the program is
somehow not where Windows Help says it is. And I can't find it.

Anybody?
 
Unfortunately, you're assuming the settings are stored with the programs.
Unfortunately, that is very rarely true. They're in the registry or their in
your XP User folder.

Tom
 
Ouch. I had a feeling that might be the case. Well.. any ideas for bringing
that kind of stuff over?
 
You can migrate files and settings from XP to Vista with the migration tool
in Vista. Programs have to be installed in Vista.
 
Bamboo Cactus said:
Ouch. I had a feeling that might be the case. Well.. any ideas for
bringing
that kind of stuff over?

I just had a look at my C drive from within Vista (C contains XP). If I go
into C-program files and browse to program application launchers then I can
actually run them within Vista. Not all programs seem to have an obvious
launcher but the following work for me... msn, irfanview, thunderbird, movie
maker as do a few others. I have not checked them all.
Whether this would work with your programs on a partition seperate to XP I
do not know, but it is worth a try. Good luck.
 
Colin Barnhorst said:
You can migrate files and settings from XP to Vista with the migration
tool in Vista. Programs have to be installed in Vista.

See my reply. I have found that programs will actually run from the XP
partition. Of course whether all programs will run is another matter :-)
 
I know about the multiboot phenomenon with at least some programs, but as
you say, predictability as to which is another matter. At least one
potential complication would be with Vista x64 where the folder structure is
different to accomodate WOW64.
 
Colin Barnhorst said:
I know about the multiboot phenomenon with at least some programs, but as
you say, predictability as to which is another matter. At least one
potential complication would be with Vista x64 where the folder structure
is different to accomodate WOW64.

Absolutely. I would not try it with 32 and 64. But then I don't have a
64bit machine, so I'm alright jack :-)
 
Beck said:
I just had a look at my C drive from within Vista (C contains XP). If I
go into C-program files and browse to program application launchers then I
can actually run them within Vista. Not all programs seem to have an
obvious launcher but the following work for me... msn, irfanview,
thunderbird, movie maker as do a few others. I have not checked them all.
Whether this would work with your programs on a partition seperate to XP I
do not know, but it is worth a try. Good luck.

Forgive me, I obviously did not read your original post properly and totally
missed the point that you already tried this.
 
You do know that you can also Cancel Message from the Message menu if you
are in Vista Mail or OE? At least only the folks who have already
downloaded the message will see it. It has covered a multitude of my sins.
;)
 
Colin Barnhorst said:
You do know that you can also Cancel Message from the Message menu if you
are in Vista Mail or OE? At least only the folks who have already
downloaded the message will see it. It has covered a multitude of my
sins. ;)

Cheers I will do both although cancels don't always work. Been one of those
days :-)
 
Hehe, no worries.

I'm just going to try reinstalling things, I guess. The big things that I
need are the Adobe products, and like I said, it seems like the
authentication has just gone away. Does anybody know where this might be
stored in XP so I can copy it over?
 
I've got XP SP2 on one partition, and have installed Vista Beta 2 on another.
When I was using XP, I'd install all my programs on a third partition, so no
programs were actually intalled to the Windows partition. As such I would've
thought it logical that I could access those programs on this unbiased
partition with Vista just as I could with XP, but such doesn't seem to be the
case. Authentication with programs such as Photoshop or iTunes aren't going
through, my bookmarks and account settings aren't loading for things like
Firefox and Thunderbird, et cetera.

I tried to take a look at the Vista Compatibility Wizard, but the program is
somehow not where Windows Help says it is. And I can't find it.

Anybody?

Well, you could probably just export the HKCU\Software\<program> and
HKLM\Software\<program> keys in XP and then reimport them in Vista for a
lot of simpler programs but ones that have many keys or services aren't
going to be that easy to bring over. Probably easiest just to bite the
bullet and reinstall the bigger application suites from scratch.

That said, most of my programs were simple to bring over. Eudora and
Agent use .ini files for their settings so all I needed to do was to
change some shortcut paths. I already had Firefox installed so that it
used a separate partition for it's profile, so I just dragged it's
installation folder over then edited my profile.ini file in
\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox to point to the correct
location for where I'm keeping my profile. That way I can use the same
profile from either Vista or XP as I dual boot.
 
You can't. You can boot into XP and go into the menus and 'unauthenticate'
it, which tells their server you've uninstalled it. Then it will
authenticate under Vista.

Tom
 
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