Taking the Pain Out of PC Moving Day

Tolstoy was talking about families when he wrote about unhappy people, but it could have easily applied to moving from an old PC to a new one. Each of us is unhappy in our own way.

Dory Devlin has a good summary of the basics in her post on moving your PC. I'll try and share a bit of some of the specific things that have worked for me and might work for you. I just moved from an old Windows XP to a new Vista machine (yes, I know—had I moved to a Mac things would be perfect by now, but I'd have nothing to write about).

1. Make a list of every single program on your old computer. Moving has become interesting now that we have widgets and gadgets as well as programs. I like to go to the Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs in Windows XP. It provides a list of every program I've installed and gives me some inkling (though far from perfect) about how often I've used the program. Like my closets, things I never use get tossed. Lifehacker suggests using an audit program like Belarc.
2. Windows Transfer—a migration tool from XP to Vista—does reasonably well at detecting movies, photos, files, and music, and moving them. It even does pretty well on detecting your settings and options for everything from display resolution to Internet bookmarks, but it's not perfect and it is detailed. Here's a good tutorial on how to use it. The most definitive document I've seen about what settings will transfer to Vista and what won't is on the Vistaheads website. My preferred method of moving files is to use a device called the Data Tornado—a cable with transfer software built right in—because it makes things fast and easy, but it misses some things,too. Because of versioning and moving to different operating systems, I strongly suggest downloading things like iTunes, Skype, BlackBerry desktop, and others directly to the new machine and then moving your files with contacts, music, and what have you.
3. If you have DVD-based software like Microsoft Office you need to reinstall the disks. Make sure you have the long (for Office it's 25 numbers and letters) ID number handy. Have someone sit next to you and read them aloud. Your chance of going it solo and not making a transcription error is slim.
4. Don't be fooled into thinking that PCs remember your password when you click the option box "remember password." They only remember your password until you move to a new machine. I had over 200 passwords stored in Outlook and I was still missing some. From airline and travel passwords, to clothing, books, and beauty it was a shocker to find out I'd neglected to record every password I needed. I used my old machine to log into the account and then ask them to send me an email with my password. Now I'm promising myself that I'll keep better lists.
5. Want to take your bookmarks and other settings with you without using the File Transfer Wizard? Go to your hard drive and click on Documents and Settings/Username and then Favorites (or another folder for other settings). Copy the Favorites (or other) folder to a flash drive or the network. Then copy it to your new PC under the same Documents and Settings/Username/Favorites directory.
6. Mostly I learned that moving PCs is a process, not a one-time move. Two weeks into it and I'm still trotting back to the old one for a missing link here and there. I think I'll make a clean break today.

Do you have other pain-killing tips for moving from one PC to another? I'm all ears.