How do I transfer settings from one drive to another?

You are supposed to be able to simply transfer your "old look" from one "computer" to another with XP. How do I transfer my settings and files from my old HD, which is now a slave, to my new HD?

If I drag and drop, it will not transfer system files (such as Explorer, or NTuser log) because it says they are in use by another program (which of course is probably Windows itself, although the ones on that drive are not in use). If I use the "File and settings transfer wizard" it aks me to point out the file where the settings are on on the other drive. I have no idea.

Oh, and the "My documents" folder seems to be gone on the old drive.

Anyone?

Pooped--Of possible help
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,87068,00.asp

Of some help, welshjim, and thanks for the speed.

BUT, this is discouraging. I thought you could simply duplicate your old HD with the Transfer Wizard. Looks like you can transfer settings but you have to reinstall all the programs???? What the hell good is that? That's still a ton of work.

I notice that the PC Mag article does not mention DriveImage from Drive Copy, which I saw mentioned on an earlier post. Do you know anything about that?

If you're bringing the entire OS you should be able to ghost the old drive image onto the new drive. If you're changing configurations, this will cause winXP's copy protection to activate, and you'll prolly have to deal with Gate's cronies to get it running again.
For imaging software I've heard that Norton gets the job done.

about "My Documents"
on 16-bit windows OSes it was kept by default as a folder in the root directory
on 32-bit windows OSes it is kept in the %systemroot% directory, by default the path is c:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents

This allows different users to have different 'My Documents' folders. So if you were expecting to see a 'c:\My Documents' on an XP install that's why it's not there

A curious part of me wonders if you could copy the entire drive from the DOS prompt. It would have to be FAT32 since there isn't much of DOS left for NTFS, and the security would be tighter. It would probably also take about a day to move that much data with algorithms designed for 60 Megabyte drives. But in the 'good old days' that's what I would have tried.

Prof,

I tried that and it stalled out at trying to transfer certain system files (after 6 hours), saying that some program was using them and to close whatever that program that was. Of course, the only possible rogram was Windows itself.

With XP, you do not get a pure dos prompt, you are still within Windows. If you try a safe mode boot with DOS prompt, you still he some system files loaded, and cannot do that.

PS "Pooped" is a new ID I had to create because my original ID nd password are locked away somewhere on the old drive. That's part of why I need to import my old settings.

If you still have the same email, you can use your old ID and use the 'forgot my password' feature.

Although the DOS prompt is probably a bad idea, it would most likely work if you used a boot disk instead of safe mode. Oh yeah, another caveat... you'd need to find a DOS with support for long file names.

I'd go buy a drive imaging app and see what happens.

Good luck and merry Christmas