So I had to “upgrade” to XP, rather against my will. Long story. Anyway, what should I be looking out for? What “features” need to be disabled either for security reasons or because they’ll annoy the hell out of me? How do I do so? I remember reading something about some problem with Windows Messanger recently - ring a bell? Please, share with me the accumulated XP wisdom of this group.
Impression so far: it froze during the inital setup process the first time I booted it up. I had to take it back to the shop, where they futzed with it for a couple of hours before they could get it to work. That’s not a good way to start. On the other hand, it found and adapted itself to my cable modem without a single piece of instruction from me, which was rather impressive.
But it’s reminded me why I loathe switching OSs. I like to have a machine that works the way I expect it to work, then I just never touch it again for as long as possible. I’ve been reinstalling crap all evening, trying to keep and transfer as much data as possible, and desperately trying to stave off the flow of crapware that comes with everything these days.
Oh, hey, that reminds me - I have a specific question. I have my old hard drive, which had Win98SE on it, still in this machine. I was using Outlook Express. Now, logically, my big piles of saved emails should still be on that disk somewhere. Is there anyway to get at them? I’d like to transfer them all to my new OE installation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
My XP install was fairly painless; all my programs still work (no reinstalls needed) except for Paperport, which needs to be reinstalled someday. And I had to find a patch for my rio500 interface program, but it hadn’t worked in a year and now it does, so no real complaint. XP seems to be pretty bright about drivers, it set up a read-write program for my CD RW drive as soon as I plugged it in, no disk or driver download needed.
I did that, and it wanted to know where I wanted to import them from. I pointed it to where the old version was installed, but I couldn’t find any messages.
It should have asked you what email program you wanted to import from, then which folders. Did you pick Microsoft Outlook Express (4 or 6) as your email program to import from? It should find the files for you, you should not have to tell it which folder (though you can specify the folder if you do not beleive it found them in the right place).
Get the PowerToysfor XP and I’d also go with X-teq’s X-setup, so that way you can tweak to pretty much your heart’s content. What one doesn’t do, the other should. (The latter is good for programs that get stuck in your add/remove programs listing.)
Don’t bother with the XP Plus! pack: the only thing out of that that I find remotely useful is the voice support for WMP. (Yes, so I’ll be lazy, and lie in bed, using my mic to control WMP.)
Use the system restore feature before doing too much putzing with your system, though. Worst case, boot into Safe Mode and restore to your known good configuration.
I’d suggest turning off the Play-Skool interface and either downloading new skins for it or using the “Classic” interface. The standard XP skin is just too horrifying to stare at, IMHO.
That’s exactly what I did, and it couldn’t find anything.
I think the problem might be that I have XP installed on a new drive, with my old 98 drive added later - it was a new install, not an upgrade. So XP is totally unaware that there was anything ever installed on that drive, if that makes sense.
I’ve only done this once but…
IIRC do a search for the .dbx extension files on the old hard drive. These are the outlook express data files you need to import. Sometimes OE will copy over existing OE mail directory folders when importing instead of adding so back up your current email before doing this.
I didnt want to do it so I just bought at computer with it already. The deals on the computers these days are extrememly affordable from
Dell Small Business. When I got it (Came USPS) a few days ago, it came with about 3 gigs of preinstalled software formulate around XP, Word/office/outlook etc.
But the first time I ran it, it just sit there saying ‘wait’ for about 5 minutes, so I waited & it came through. I guess that was XP trying to formulate the activation code, which is machine specific. so now it only takes about 20 seconds to show the desktop when I turn it on. Otherwise so far smooth sailing.
(BTW, you can get these for about $599 now, free shipping,
Super Desktop Dimension 4550 P4-2.4Ghz 128MB DDR333 Memory/60GB Free 40xCDRW/Geforce4MX, XP Home MS Works with 15" LCD Flat Panel $599 shipped free. techbargains.com has the coupons & things. )
Search your old hard drive for *.dbx. Copy any files you find to a folder on your new hard drive. Open OE and go to Tools|Options|Maintenance. Click Store Folder, then Change. Point it to that folder on your new hard drive. It will ask if you want to keep the old messages or start a new message store. Keep the old ones. This should get you all your messages.