[Dxbase] DXBase Survives Upgrade from XP to Windows 7

Mon Feb 11 10:12:34 EST 2013

I have a friend who is an MIT grad, IT industry person and he tells me 
all the time that he has no idea how the consumer ever manages a PC and 
Windows. I agree with him 100%. My son is a senior in college. He and 
his friends won't touch a Windows system. I just lost a HD on my 
machine. I decided NOT to upgrade to WIN 7. I'm still struggling with 
loading drivers, getting things back to where they were, etc. A 
complete nightmare. Weren't computers supposed to make our lives 
easier????? :))
Steve, N4JQQ
On 2/11/2013 8:47 AM, Kim Elmore wrote:
> I've dreaded the inevitable upgrade form XP to Win 7 (and is despise 
> the user interface on Win 8). XP is stable, does what I want and is a 
> known quantity -- I've gotten passably good at dealing with it over 
> the years. I've learned how to repair XP installations in-place using 
> what I've heard called "the hat trick," and so I've been happy. I 
> don't like upgrading the OS: it's always dicey. Years ago, I started 
> out running NT and used the option Microsoft offered that allowed 
> in-place upgrades. I went from NT to 2000 and then to XP, all in 
> place. I've always had backups and cloned disks available, just in 
> case anything went badly, but I was always careful and it always went 
> well. I've had everything set up just like I wanted it for years and 
> so keeping it that way is a big time-saver. Besides, I have some 
> applications I like but for which the media was long ago lost -- like 
> the Eudora 7.1 mail client that I'm using now.
>> Alas, all good things come to an end and so it is with XP. WHen 
> support and hot fixes end, the system will slowly become vulnerable 
> and, sooner or later, any new applications won't run under it. But, I 
> really didn't want to reinstall everything, especially since I can't 
> because I no longer have the media (or a floppy drive :). So, I 
> decided to try a program one of the IT guys told me about at work 
> called PCMover.
>> I've always kept my application installations on a separate partition 
> (in the old days, it was a separate disk), so I figured I'm set up to 
> avoid some of the gotchas in Win 7. With some of my IT friend's help, 
> I had successfully migrated form XP to Win 7 (64) at work, so I 
> figured there was a good chance I could do this at home. Becuase my 
> system has a traceable history back to NT, there were some subtleties 
> to handle (the system was partially in C:\WINNT not completely in 
> C:\Windows).
>> The process consists mainly of manipulating registry entries and goes 
> pretty fast (I used the "PCMover Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant"). I even 
> recovered (mostly) my desktop configuration! The test was to see if 
> DXBase made it and I'm happy to say it did! It had lost all prior 
> references to my data base, but I copied those form my still-extant XP 
> system (booted from a separate disk) and, sure enough, DXBase is fine 
> (I'm running 2007 v1.09).
>> But some other non-DXBase necessities needed attention. For example, 
> all of the USB-to-RS232 devices needed driver updates, including a 
> PCIe to high speed serial card I have. Once the new drivers were 
> installed I re-set all of my COM port numbers and speeds for my 
> various ham-related programs and devices and I was done. Of course, I 
> also reinstalled various other drivers for my graphics card and 
> motherboard, and I have yet to reinstall my Silex wireless printer 
> server on this system, but everything else seems to work fine.
>> I have no interest of any kind in PCMover or LapLink; I'm simply a 
> satisfied customer. It's not perfect and it's not seamless, but it did 
> what I wanted, both here at home and at work. I wouldn't recommend it 
> if you're not comfortable digging about your operating system. If 
> you're conversant with XP, WIn 7 isn't all that different and if you 
> ant to retain your current installed programs, I recommend you give it 
> a try. Of course, keep a clone (not merely a backup) of your current 
> system so you can immediately go back to what works if anything goes 
> wrong or need time for extended fiddling with the new OS.
>> 73,
>> N5OP
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