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Lots of questions about Windows 
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Following on from my previous questions about Windows spec machines I have now taken delivery of a number of Dell i5 laptops and desktop machines, which I am in the process of getting ready to replace their old computers.

I have come across a number of problems, in that some of the computers being replaced are very poorly indeed, and I will am trying to access the files on them by pulling the old hard disks, putting them in a suitable caddy and connecting to the new computers and manually extracting and copying the files.

Firstly, one of the old disks appears to be dead. Is there a windows equivalent of Mac OS "Disk Utility" which I might use to see if I can coax some life out of it?

Secondly, where do I find the bookmarks files for Internet Explorer and Firefox and how do I extract the bookmarks from them into the new computer. I'm going from Windows XP to Windows 10.

I'm sure there will be more questions as I get further into setting these machines up, but that's is it for right now.

Thanks!

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Last edited by BigRedX on Thu Feb 02, 2017 8:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:11 pm
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Well this thread wasn't what I expected at all :lol:

Question 1 : There's a famous old DOS utility called CHKDISK which I understand is still around, but there is an option to do a consistency check from the GUI if you can see the disk in explorer - see here.

Question 2: I wouldn't bother searching for the files with IE if it's a working machine, it's pretty simple to export your favourites - go to the file menu, select 'import and export', then 'export to a file' then 'favourites'. You can then do the reverse on the new machine. Not sure about Firefox, don't use it much. If you're talking about retrieving them from the busted drive, have a look in <drive letter>:\Users\<user's login>\Favorites.

Hope that helps


Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:50 pm
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I've fixed the title now!

I managed to get the drive to come to life by connecting it to one of my Macs, and have made a copy of the USERS folders for safety. It was a potentially dead drive in a dead machine.

I've had a look in the location that you suggested and there are two folders called "Links" and "Microsoft Websites" holding some files with the extension .url Is that what I need and do they go in the same folder on the Windows 10 computer?

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Thu Feb 02, 2017 8:15 pm
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BigRedX wrote:
I've had a look in the location that you suggested and there are two folders called "Links" and "Microsoft Websites" holding some files with the extension .url Is that what I need and do they go in the same folder on the Windows 10 computer?

Assuming both computers are running at least Windows 7 I think that's the case yes. if the target computer is older than that i.e running windows XP, I think the location you'd need to save to is different. If the target is XP they'll have to go in C:\Documents and Settings\<user's login name>\Favorites I think,.

if they're running anything earlier than XP you frankly shouldn't let them on the internet in the first place :D


Fri Feb 03, 2017 2:24 pm
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For disk rescue, regardless of whether it is a Mac disk, Windows, Playstation, Sky+ etc. is SpinRite. I has done a remarkable job for me over the years.

Firefox - if the drive is still in the old PC, you can set up a Firefox account and all passowrd, cookies, browser history and bookmarks are synced to the cloud. Log onto the new machine and enter the account and everything will be streamed back.

Alternatively, use the export.

If you can't put the drive back in the original PC, then try this: https://support.mozilla.org/de/questions/971302


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A: Copying your Internet Explorer Favorites to another computer is relatively simple. Browse your C: drive in Windows Explorer and look for the Favorites folder in your user folder under C:\Users. Copy the Favorites folder to a thumb drive, insert the drive in the new computer, and copy the Favorites folder into the new PC's user folder.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/busines ... 983240.php

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Sat Feb 04, 2017 7:20 am
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Everything is going reasonably well with the data transfer from the old PCs except that two of the machine are dead. However the drives appear to be OK. I've pulled one of them and put it in a USB caddy and attached it to the new computer.

However when I try to access the data on this drive - specifically the folders within the old user folder so that I can copy all the files across I get the following message: "You don't currently have permission to access this folder"

I click on continue which brings up: "To gain access to this folder you will need to use the security tab"

When I click on that link I get the "My Document Properties" dialog with the Security Tab open and the message: "You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object. Click Advanced to continue"

When I click on the advanced button I get a dialog box telling me: You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object. Click Continue to attempt the operation with administrative permissions"

When I click the Continue button I get: " You do not have permission to view this object's security properties, even as an administrative user. To try taking ownership of the object, which includes permission to view its properties, click Change above"

When I do that I get a dialog box "Select User or Group" with the following fields:
Select this object type
From this location
Enter the object name to select

WTF am I supposed to do here?

All I want to do is to change the settings so that I can view the folders and their contents and copy them onto the new computer, and so that the user of the computer can then do something with them.

Ideas?

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Mon Feb 06, 2017 6:40 pm
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OK by trying various random things and finally typing the computer's user name into the last field I am now able to open the folders and view the contents including the sub-folders within.

However I can't actually copy any of the files onto the C drive of the computer.

When I select "Properties" for one of these files and select the Security Tab, I get a list of Group and User names which have a Group called "SYSTEM" and a single user with a name consisting of a long string of numbers with the letter "S" at the start. Both of these appear to have full permissions, so why can't I copy the file?

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Mon Feb 06, 2017 6:59 pm
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OK. Please ignore all of the above. I've managed to add the main user of the new computer as an owner of the folders (and sub-folders and files) that I wanted to on the disk and now I can copy and open the files.

Hurrah!

However I have a new problem:

It appears that there were two email accounts on the old computer, one was an Exchange account which has reloaded successfully by adding the email address and password into Outlook. The other was an IMAP account which only seems to have loaded all the un-read emails from the inbox and none of the old emails that had been sorted into sub-folders on the old computer.

Is it going to be possible to retrieve these emails given that the old computer is dead? I have the drive which does work. Where will I find the file(s) that hold these emails (the old OS was either Windows XP or Vista) and can I get them into the new version of Outlook (2016) on the new computer?

Help...

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Mon Feb 06, 2017 7:42 pm
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If they used Outlook on the old computer, then you need to look for an .ost or .pst file in the user folders.

https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... d4eef30b78

https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... 1892e2aacc

https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/confi ... -computer/

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 7:36 am
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Thanks big_D.

It turns out that they have been moving all the email they wanted to save from the IMAP account into folders created in the Exchange account so all the emails that they need were saved on the Exchange server. Which is a relief!

However I do need to restore all the sent emails from the IMAP account. I have found four .pst files on the old hard drive but only one has an up to date modification date - the file called "archive1.pst" Is this going to be the right file and how can I extract just the contents of the sent folder/outbox from it without re-importing all the other email that I have already retrieved (or deleting new email from the IMAP account)?

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 11:18 am
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BigRedX wrote:
Thanks big_D.

It turns out that they have been moving all the email they wanted to save from the IMAP account into folders created in the Exchange account so all the emails that they need were saved on the Exchange server. Which is a relief!

However I do need to restore all the sent emails from the IMAP account. I have found four .pst files on the old hard drive but only one has an up to date modification date - the file called "archive1.pst" Is this going to be the right file and how can I extract just the contents of the sent folder/outbox from it without re-importing all the other email that I have already retrieved (or deleting new email from the IMAP account)?


Sounds like it could be what your after. No, you don't need t import the entire contents of the .pst file if you only need a few things from it.
All you need to do is open the .pst file with Outlook on the new computer (in Outlook there should be an 'Open Outlook Data File' option in the File menu somewhere) and you'll be able to transfer anything you need out of it - it won't import anything, you'll get an extra mailbox showing up in Outlook from which you can copy or move the e-mails you need. Once you've finished you can close it an it'll not show up in Outlook unless you re-open it.
Bear in mind that .pst files can be password protected - it depends what the user did when they created the .pst file in the first place. If it is protected the user will need to give you the password.

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 11:37 am
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That's interesting. The .pst file is in a folder that is hidden to both the Mac and Windows, but it can be found on the Mac and copied out to a non-hidden folder. Windows can't find this file at all.

I'm now copying it from the Mac onto a USB pen drive and hopefully Windows will be able to see it and done something with it too!

Is there any easy way to show hidden folders on an external drive in Windows?

BTW the Mac thinks a .pst file is a Plug-in settings file for Apple Logic! It displays an icon with a waveform and a lego brick.

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:59 pm
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Well that sort of worked. Outlook opened the file and I was able to copy all the emails into the "Sent" folder. Unfortunately the most recent email was a year ago. None of the other .pst files have a newer modification date, or are large enough to hold the required date (this one was just over 1GB in size). Is there anywhere else I can look or do I have to just write off the missing emails?

Edit: I have found a 4.5GB .ost file. Is that just for the Exchange account or will it also hold some of the IMAP account emails?

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:15 pm
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BigRedX wrote:
Well that sort of worked. Outlook opened the file and I was able to copy all the emails into the "Sent" folder. Unfortunately the most recent email was a year ago. None of the other .pst files have a newer modification date, or are large enough to hold the required date (this one was just over 1GB in size). Is there anywhere else I can look or do I have to just write off the missing emails?

Edit: I have found a 4.5GB .ost file. Is that just for the Exchange account or will it also hold some of the IMAP account emails?

I'm not entirely sure. .ost files are offline exchange files. It's worth a try I guess - they could have filed stuff in there.

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:22 pm
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I've just asked what they did with sent emails and the answer is "nothing" so they should all be in the "sent" folder. I'll have to assume that the missing ones are lost forever unless anyone has a better idea?

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Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:09 pm
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