Transferring user settings...

[donkey33]

I just installed an 80 GB HDD and transferred windows XP Home onto it instead of the smaller HDD.

My question is all my settings and desktop and taskbar, etc, is now gone. It's all under my previous user name in documents and settings.

How can I transfer my previous settings (even startup) accross to the new user so it runs the same as before.

Thanks

 

[LeeJend]

Now that it's too late...

The easy way to do this is to put the master jumper in on the old HD, put the new HD in as a slave, boot off the utility disk that came with the HD and copy the entire old HD to the new HD. Shut down, take out the original drive and remove the slave jumper from the new drive. This uses up about half the new HD. Now make a second Partition on the new drive using the remaining space and put all your bulk storage there (music, videos, downloads, etc.).

You now have a back up image (keep it safe some place at least 4 weeks) on the original HD and the same setup on the new HD. After about 4 weeks, or longer, without the new setup cratering you can install the old drive as a slave and reformat and partition it any way you want. Or, I usaully just copy the new HD data over to the old one periodically and use it as a back up.

The hard way is to do what you did then you have to copy the folders out of the old HD "My Documents" into the new HD My Documents. You can not just drag and drop the whole "my Documents" over, there are un-copyable system files in there.

This will not get everything because some programs hide their setup files all over the place (windows and program files directories, etc).

 

[donkey33]

Ok. Thanks.

I should've mentioned I don't know that much about all this so that option might not work for me.

Is there any way to run windows from the original smaller HDD. All the files are still there so how do I get windows to recognise that I want it to startup from the smaller one and just leave the 80GB for space.

Thanks