As a small side-step to my previous Windows Vista experience I had a small job to do: I had to convert data and settings from an older PC running Windows XP to a new one running Windows Vista.

I actually found a tool to convert all data on the XP (in Dutch: bestanden en instelling overzetten wizard, or in English something like files and settings transfer wizard). Unfortunately, the new Vista PC did not have this wizard, but did have the windows easy transfer wizard. Of course, if it looks the same, smells the same, in windows it probably is NOT the same. And this is true, as this is probably a new or updated program that was not available in XP. Fortunately you can install it on XP and proceed.

So, happy me, I checked everything: convert all accounts and all settings and go! A smart solution where a small string is printed on one machine is used to make sure these two computers participate together in a easy transfer.

Because it was quite some GBytes and the older computer only had a 100Mbit network card, it took -quite- long. No worry, keep the machines running for the night and easy does it !  But in Windows world again, it is NOT. It gave an error access denied on the XP machine, just at the point you expect it to say "I'm finished". No other information so you don't know where it did not have access to. But the account that ran the wizard ran on Administrator permissions, so how could it not have access? (before this, it already stopped about 5 times to tell me it could not transfer some file in the middle of the transfer process, eager to tell me before continuing with all other files)

So I tried again, and failed: access denied. I selected a lot less settings using the Advanced option, and access denied again. Maybe the user was accessing something, had a file open so it could not access it? No worry, just start your XP in safe mode with networking support, so it will not run unnecessary processes and start the wizard, smart? Yes, that will work! Anywhere but NOT in windowsland: you could not run the wizard in safe mode (why not? please tell me why not!). So I made an extra user with administrator rights, ran the wizard again: access denied.

To end this story, I only selected the bare minimum that I needed: Outlook e-mail settings, the printer settings and nothing more. I hear you say: no, that will not work, give it up! But, no, give this company some credit: it worked! It finally managed to convert the e-mail settings. Only for some reason, my printer settings were not converted. Bad, but not really a disaster as I could just download and install the latest drivers as an alternative. 

For the rest of the conversion I did it the usual way by just sharing some folders and copying them over the network.

This was definitely my last voluntary Windows job for me.  Ubuntu will prevail.