I bid farewell to my last remaining Vista based PC the other day. A lot has been said about users experience with Windows Vista. I am happy to leave it behind and move on to Windows 7 with SP1. This post is about Windows Easy Transfer, a useful tool when you’d like a fresh install of Windows, rather than an upgrade over the top of Vista.

Unless you maintain your Windows installation with software that keeps it in tune (eg TuneUp Utilities) a few years of operation can slow down your PC and fill it with an abundance of files and registry entries. A fresh install of Windows is a good option if it’s suitable (not always possible as you’ll need to reinstall all of the software that was on the old version and update drivers as well).

Windows Easy Transfer is described as “copy your files, photos, music, e-mail, settings, and more from a computer running Windows Vista to a computer running Windows 7. You can transfer data using an Easy Transfer Cable, removable media, or across a network”. More information is on the link provided.

From the Vista PC I fired up Easy Transfer and selected 5 user accounts. In Vista, Easy Transfer takes over your PC session so you wont be able to switch to another Window until it completes or you cancel out of it. In Windows 7 this isn't the case. You can pick and choose which items you want to transfer up to an individual account level via an intuitive tree like structure of options.

I chose an external USB drive as the target for the transfer. A *.MIG file is created, in my case a 10GB file. Initially Easy Transfer said the file size would be a whopping 228 GB! That’s because it also selects all the local hard drives from your PC. Make sure you uncheck these if you don’t want them.

You can view a report upon completion

Once Windows 7 (which comes with Easy Transfer included) was newly installed with Service Pack 1, I installed all the required software, everything that would need a user account’s profile information, such as iTunes, MS Office. Once all the software was installed I fired up Windows Easy Transfer on Windows 7 and followed the wizard to import all the account settings.

This worked well with all the files correctly in place. Even Outlook (which was 2007 on Vista and 2010 on Windows 7) had the correct account settings and all emails available, the user had to only enter their password for the first time to reconnect. Easy Transfer creates the login accounts that you exported from the old PC, so you don't have to do this manually.

Desktop backgrounds and minor personalisation settings had to be reset but otherwise the Easy Transfer utility worked well. Windows 7 did a good job of installing Video, sound and related drivers. Only my Web Cam which is a Creative WebCam Live Ultra required me to source a hard to find ‘Beta Vista’ driver as the manufacturer no longer supports it.

Easy Transfer also works if moving from an old 32 Bit version of Vista/Windows 7 to a 64 Bit version of Windows 7.

Hasta la vista - Vista!