BleepingComputer.com: do share your knowledge

i bought this new pc and i have the old pc. i have some much needed info on the old pc. the new one is a dell and the old one is an hp. now the screen is not functioning properly on the old so i can't see anything and when i turn it on. i know there is a way of transfering files, or hardware from one pc to the another. i heard something called slaving hardware? do you recommend it? if, so do you know of any tutorials books out there? or can you give me a link of any website that might be able to help me? or do you recommend another way to go through this whole process?


my OS is windows Xp home


desperately yours,
non-tech savvy.

I belive slavcong hard drives can only be accomplished where space is available for a secondary harddrive.

In this case slaving would do you no good, there are tools out there that you coyuld use to export your old data but you will need a new monitor. I reccomend purchasing a vga adapter so you could hook your laptop up to a projector screen or tv. Then you would be able to see.

c'mon folks.

Slaving a hard drive merely means taking the hard drive ot of your old computer, setting the jumpers to slave, and plugging it into your new computer. Your hard drive in your new system should already have the jumpers set to make it the master. By setting one as a masteer, and one as a slve, then the computer knows which Hard Drive contains the operating system to boot.

It's not much different than having two CD-Roms, or two floppy drives.

Once you boot your new system, and providing that your new computer already has an operating system installed, then all you need to do is copy things over. It's not that hard. With that being said, if you are not used to messing around with the insides of your computer, then I would not recommend you do this. Take it to a shop, and have them set the jumpers and plug in the secondary hard dive for you. The potential for a big oops is pretty big, especially if you short out the motherboard. That can happen if a jumper setting is incorrect.

Once the disk is in your new system, copying is just a matter of drag and drop.

thanks a lot. that helps

And actually, if the old hard drive is still functioning OK, you can just leave many of the files on it, and use the old drive for additional storage.
Cheers,
John