Anyone Use Windows Easy Transfer?

Hello all,

I recently got in a Dell Precision M6500 system. After using it for about a week, I finally have it all set up with all of my software and such... only to find out that Windows Firewall is broken. The service won't start, and I'm not getting anywhere fixing it. I honestly always disable it, but when I went to do that, I couldn't as it was already broken. The problem with this scenario is that some networking features aren't working.

I'm ready to clean install AGAIN. I don't mind doing this as I have that routine down to a science. I was just wondering if Windows Easy Transfer actually works well for backing up program settings and configurations... especially Outlook and the rest of Microsoft Office 2010.

If anyone wants to take a stab at my Firewall problem, I posted that on the TechNet Forums. I looked around here and didn't see anything either.

Yes, I use it a couple times a week for customers. It does an excellent job.

I never use it, and always suggest people avoid it as well. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. The point is, why would I ever want some software app to guess at what's important to me, rather than making that choice myself? Backing up my own data for a reformat/reinstall has to be one of the easiests tasks anyone can do on a computer. You know what's important to you, where you store your files, etc....so don't let some software app try and decide.

DeaconFrost said:

I never use it, and always suggest people avoid it as well. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. The point is, why would I ever want some software app to guess at what's important to me, rather than making that choice myself? Backing up my own data for a reformat/reinstall has to be one of the easiests tasks anyone can do on a computer. You know what's important to you, where you store your files, etc....so don't let some software app try and decide.

Well, I have used it before, and it does give you options as far as what to backup and restore. I mainly want to use it for settings, not files and data. I use Acronis for that. Since Microsoft ditched the Office settings backup/restore tool, this is kind of my only shot at that.

Honestly, in the time it would take me to run Easy Transfer, I can just pop the settings back into Outlook.

DeaconFrost said:

Honestly, in the time it would take me to run Easy Transfer, I can just pop the settings back into Outlook.

I know what you mean. I do it quickly. I just have something like 5x e-mail accounts with some very strange settings.. and tons of other preferences tweaked to my liking. There's also Word, Excel, Visio, and PowerPoint prefs I like to keep. I also keep Outlook PSTs in a different location than custom, so moving, deleting, re-linking is a pain.

Maybe I'll try it and report back.

There's no harm in backing up your data and trying it. I used to have wild Outlook configs, but it led me to greatly simplify the way I used e-mail. I also did away with offline accounts and .pst files. Switching to IMAP was the best decision I ever made. For my personal accounts, I use WLM, and it syncs across three computers for me, so I actually have nothing to back up anymore. I stopped using Outlook for personal accounts, as WLM gives me contacts and a calendar as well.

DeaconFrost said:

There's no harm in backing up your data and trying it. I used to have wild Outlook configs, but it led me to greatly simplify the way I used e-mail. I also did away with offline accounts and .pst files. Switching to IMAP was the best decision I ever made. For my personal accounts, I use WLM, and it syncs across three computers for me, so I actually have nothing to back up anymore. I stopped using Outlook for personal accounts, as WLM gives me contacts and a calendar as well.

I use Outlook solely with IMAP accounts. Some of the accounts are Google Apps Gmail accounts, and I have Outlook set up nicely to replicate everything I do there online and vice versa. I use Soocial for Contact sync and I also have Calendar sync. The workflow is very nice when it comes to using an Android phone. IMAP used to suck with Outlook. It got much better with Outlook 2007 and 2010.

I've used it, with disappointing results. The good news was that it didn't actually cause any harm, but the bad news was that many of my settings and customizations didn't 'transfer' -- and I had to reset them all over again. If you're going to use it, before you do so, take some time to make note of (and even write down) some of your most important settings --- particularly the ones you don't think you'll remember. Because once they're gone, you might very well forget exactly what options you had set.