I am going to do a clean install of W7 Home Premium, replacing Vista HP - my question is.. what is the point of backing up settings?
As I have to re-install my software and much of that will store settings in the registry as well as in folders, surely importing old settings is likely to cause more problems than it's worth?
Windows Easy Transfer saves your user account settings, documents, music etc. That's all. After you've done a clean install you still have to load all your programs. Easy transfer does not keep registry settings.
What exactly is stored in User Account settings?
I have used it several times with no problems
Windows Easy Transfer - Transfer To & From Computers
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In order to keep things as simple as possible, unless specifically asked by the OP, all he needed to know was that everything in his user account would be saved. People don't require too much information as it confuses some. If they want/need to know more then they'll ask. I've found that less is more to a lot of the people that come here for help
I don't bother with Easy Transfer and don't trust it. I fiddled with it a bit when I was running a Windows 7 release candidate and wasn't amused--it wouldn't allow me to restore anything, for whatever reason. It's like imaging--wonderful when it works and horrid when it doesn't. You might hope that it works OK, but if you have relied on it and it doesn't work, you are hosed.
For a clean install, I just back up my bookmarks, email, and data and then manually restore those 3 items after I am done. Never had an issue.
Actually a lot of individual user settings for applications are stored in this little place called Application Data, which resides in each users profile.
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