I'm finally removing Windows ME from my parents' computer and replacing it with Windows XP. (What I'd really like to do of course is sling the stinking Wintel carcass out and replace it with a nice shiny iMac, but I don't have the spare cash for that option right now.)
I have copied their entire disk onto my laptop using ssh and rsync, and I'm in the process of figuring out what data is where, so that I can copy it back onto the fresh install. This is not aided by Microsoft's "spray it all over the filesystem" policy.
Some documents are in "C:\My Documents". Apparently Outlook Express stores mailboxes in "C:\Windows\Application Data\Identities". Some files have wound up in the owner application's directory within "C:\Program Files". Urgh.
I'm trying to decide what AntiVirus solution to install on this machine once it's up and running, too. I have tried Norton AntiVirus and McAfee before, but I've found them both irritating and invasive. Paul recommends AVG because it's small and light. It's only £17.60 (at today's exchange rates), and virus definition updates for two years, which is nice. Kaspersky looks interesting as it uses heuristic analysis, so will hopefully spot mutations even without definition updates. It has an attractive price - £23.95 - though this includes only one year of definition updates.
Posted by savs at February 15, 2004 12:00 AM