Marathon Computer Conversion Session

July 30, 2007 at 9:21 am · Filed under The Virtual Edge

It was time to get a new computer. Don’t deny the signs because you know what they are: 

  1. The computer is slower than it used to be.
  2. Programs get hung up and stop responding.
  3. You get the occasional blue screen of death.
  4. You find yourself restarting your computer, a lot.

I was ready and so I took the plunge, but I didn’t want to do this alone. Don’t get me wrong, I can plug in all the parts; that’s not the hard part. It’s all about the data. I wanted to have all of my data, and have room for lots more. But I didn’t want to just copy my old computer to my new one, because then I knew that I would bring all the problems with it.

So I asked my computer technician, (Albee of Faster Connections (www.fasterconnections.net) to help me do the conversion. Here was our strategy:

  1. Back up my old computer completely to my external hard drive.
  2. Buy a new computer, but wipe it clean of all the pre-installed software.
  3. Load the operating system (Windows XP, not Vista!) on the clean computer.
  4. Reinstall all the software that I use, and get all the software updates online.

Sounds simple enough, right? It took two of us 6 hours without breaks! In all fairness, there were two other computers involved and a wireless network connection between them all to sort out.

Boy was I glad that Albee guided the operations, and that I was there to answer all the questions, find software, and make decisions as they came up. I don’t regret for a second the money I spent for this. The result: a fast, clean, and efficiently operating new computer with all my old data intact. Computer nirvana!

Comments are closed.