Boy oh boy. I’m having troubling cutting over. I’ve got my Ryzen 7 5800X system all set up and ready to go. But I still haven’t transitioned from the i7 Skylake (now almost 10 years old) to the new build. I keep messing around with stuff and tweaking this and that. And I’ve got my planned Win10-2-11 switchover hanging fire in the meanwhile. Let me describe my sticking points, in the hopes it will move me over the finish line this week.

Why Is My Win10-2-11 Switchover Hanging Fire?

Basically, it comes down to 3 reasons:

1. Music. I’m running a large music collection in Media Monkey 2024 Lifetime on the i7Skylake. But try as I might a simple file copy doesn’t bring the whole shebang up on the new build. I’m playing with a different package now called Helium that seems to provide a pathway, but it requires me to convert the library to a neutral format for transfer. That’s taking an ungodly amount of time.

2. Email. I’ve got email up and running on both PCs right now and everything seems to be working OK. I’m switching from Microsoft 365 to Office 2024 to bring everything local, and email is coming through. But I’m concerned about Contacts carrying over. Thanks to a recent “save to PST/import from PST” maneuver that seems to be working now.

3. Inertia. I’m simply a bit apprehensive about switching from a know, good, working system of long duration and experience to a new and relatively untried one. I’ve got to summon my moxie, and make it happen, I guess.

Running in Parallel Should Provide Fallback

Here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll switch the position of the two cases in my office around. The Flo6 is next to the filing cabinet for Desk#2 in my office, with the i7Skylake under my primary working desk. I’ll uncable both, and recable each one in the other’s current place. That way, I can remote into the old machine from the new one and see or run anything there via RDP that I can’t access on the  Flo6.

But first, I still have to install and tweak a few more programs on the Flo6:

• MS Solitaire: can’t do without it for breaks and recreation on my desktop.
• Macrium Reflect: Need to configure my 9AM daily backup (lets me see it complete for ultimate peace of mind each working day)
• Image editor: I’m going to have to decide if I want to upgrade Corel PaintShop Pro to 2025, or switch to Adobe Creative Cloud. I just checked pricing, and I think I’m upgrading what I already know…
• PDF reader: I’ll need to decomission Nitro Pro on the old PC to bring it up on the new one.

That should do it. I’ll start this afternoon. Thanks for the pep talk: I guess I needed it…