Customer Reviews

PCmover with Selectivity, Including Laplink USB 1.1 Cable

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

What a headache and a waste of time and money! I used this product to transfer from an XP desktop to a new Vista desktop. Getting it to transfer in the first place was a frustrating, time consuming struggle, involving an online chat with tech support, who was marginally helpful at best. They resolved the issue by having me switch ends of the transfer cable, which has NO MARKINGS to indicate that it makes any difference which way it is connected. After several tries the transfer worked. 14 hours later it was done. I then started to explore the new computer to find that almost none of the transferred software worked. Those that did work, such as photoshop, were unable to open any of the associated files that were transferred with them. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling several applications to find that they would not work at all because PCMover had changed OS settings. I talked with tech support for several software apps and they could not understand why they wouldn't work. I was advised that PCMover had corrupted the OS, and that I would need to erase and recover the hard drive. I am now in the process of doing that. Hopefully PCMover hasn't completely trashed my new PC. With any luck I will be starting fresh tomorrow at square one where I was before I ever installed this crap software.

Save yourself a lot of time and aggravation by just manually re-installing your software and transferring your necessary files. I wish I had.

This product just worked very well for me when I transferred all my data from a 7 year old PC running Windows XP to a brand new Dell running Windows Vista. All my old programs worked without my having to re-install or re-enter the product key codes. It saved me time and much aggravation. But there are a few things that you need to do for it to work well:

1. Make sure to follow the directions. You must install the software on both computers in the order that is given in the step-by-step instructions.

2. Both computers need to have access to the internet at some point in the installation process so it can check for the most recent version of the software and download that.

3. Once you disconnect from the internet, be sure to turn OFF any anti-virus program and all other unnecessary programs that might be running in the background. If you don't, that will slow down the process.

4. Before you start the transfer, make sure the power management settings on both computers are changed so that neither one will automatically shut down after a period of time. If you have the power-saver feature activated, you'll want to undo that. Both computers need to stay on during the entire transfer.

5. When you get to the screen where you get to choose which programs you want transferred, uncheck any programs where there will be a newer version on the new computer (like Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Adobe, etc.).

6. Once the PC to PC transfer starts, just leave it alone and let it run.

It only took 2 hours to move all of my data using a 1.1 USB port on the old computer and a 2.0 USB port on the new one.

As I mentioned before, all of my programs (Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, etc.) and preferences (screen saver, Internet Explorer bookmarks/favorites, etc.) and files (iTunes library, photos) were completely transferred to my new machine and I did not have to re-install any of them or re-enter the program serial numbers.

The only glitch that I encountered was that the transfer stopped during the last 15 minutes for some unknown reason. PC Mover said I had to start the transfer all over again. So I did, and to my surprise and much gladness, it did not start all over at the beginning with the first files. The program simply picked up where it left off and only took 14 minutes to complete successfully.

This software was a godsend and worked as promised.

I have used PCMover twice now for moving programs, settings and files from old computers to new computers. The results have been great. Not all programs will move flawlessly. Some I have had to reinstall, reactivate or adjust settings. I found that it was much better to uninstall any programs that are not moving from the old to the new computer before beginning the transfer. I found that uninstalling the anti-virus and firewall software to be the most important to unintall from the old compouter before starting the transfer. I have used the 2.0 USB cable for the fastest transfers. Make sure you have an existing 2.0 USB port on your old computer or your transfer time will be long.

Always skeptical about "easy solutions"...but I can tell you this is one of the "easy solutons". changed from XP to Vista machine and everything went smoothly. there were a few apps that I did have to delete and reinstall--but I think that had more to do with Vista than PCMover. I do suggest REALLY following the directions. The nice part was the old files were still on my old machine. I waited a week to bang on the new machine before taking them off the old one...just to be safe.

I recently purchased a new PC from Dell, and I bought this software (from them) along with the computer. Owch, what a mistake, I should have read the reviews here first.

I had pretty low expectations/requirements from this software actually. Mainly I just wanted to move over my settings, email, and music. How about 0 for 3!

Firstly, the software can only be used 1 time (owch!). That is their ridiculous licensing agreement. Second, you need to install it on both the machine you are moving from, and the machine your are moving to. Alright, so I'm moving from a windows xp machine to a windows vista machine. Surely that's got to be the most common configuration these days right? Surely that's the one thing that would work right? wrong. Firstly, the installation crashed on *both* machines. After downloading updates from the web, re-installing and uninstalling several times it finally seemed to install correctly.

Smooth sailing from there right? Nope. First, I tried to do the transfer over ethernet, since I have a home network and that is supposidly supported by this software. That didn't work at all. So then I grudgingly tried a transfer over the cable that they provided. The software had a lot of trouble recognizing the cable, but after fiddling with that until it worked, I finally set up a transfer. Several hours later, my vista box had developed major problems, none of my email or bookmarks or anything had been transfered (only documents) and I was one cheesed off customer.

This software is completely (and I mean COMPLETELY) worthless. It's a waste of your time, and a waste of your money. Believe me, the way to go is just to get an external hard drive and drag the files over you want to keep, or do it over your home network if you have one. You'll save yourself a lot of time and a lot of headaches doing it that way, believe me, I wish I had.

I bought this product hoping it would make the migration from my old XP based computer to my new, also XP based, computer easy. I was wrong. After data transfer, my new PC wouldn't boot. Had to do full restore on new PC. Repeated the entire process again with exact same result. So after restoring new PC the 2nd time, I decided to moved one application at a time instead of transferring all applications and data in one attempt. Guess what ... New PC wouldn't boot up after the move. Each transfer cycle took good 2-3 hours. After wasting entire Sunday (and oh yeah, no tech support on the weekends), ended up installing all my application and drivers from original install CDs to my new PC. Disappointed. Huge waste of money and time.

With as big a project of moving into a new computer is, I thought I would give this a try... big mistake.

Initially the product did as advertised all the data and programs were moved over and I was excited "That was sure worth the $40." I said... then later in the day things started to happen.

MS Word's list of recently used files was not being updated when I used something not on the list... turns out the list would not update anymore.

"Windows Auto Update" was on and the system tray icon indicated updates were downloaded and ready to install... I indicated that it should proceed... all updates failed.

There were issues with the video card so I called Dell and asked for help, more issues came up. The 3rd level tech connected to my computer using "Dell Connect" and going through the "Remove Programs" option in the Control Panel he turns on "show updates"... their were updates that showed they were installed back in 2004... the tech asked how those would be on the machine... I explained that I had used PCMover and he indicated that he could not help anymore, that what I had done relieved Dell from helping... unless I reformatted the drive and started with the drive "as shipped"... which I did.

So I spent $40 went through the PCMover process and ended up having to do everything by had anyway...

I'm not happy. I have asked Amazon for a refund... haven't heard back yet.

I was disappointed with the customer service dept. I had the wrong cable
for the transfer. With Vista 64bit you need the orange cord. Which was not discovered by the first two customer service reps. I had to talk to management before one was sent three day UPS. PCmover with Selectivity, Including Laplink USB 2.0 Cable

I'm not a novice PC user, but this software is ridiculous! It doesn't work, period. After hours of struggling and 'chatting' with a useless 'tech expert' (you have to schedule an appointment if you want to actually talk to a human), it still doesn't work. The frustration was the worst part; they should pay me to use this crap!

I thought that this product would handle the movement of my files and programs from my old to my new computer. I read the reviews and saw the problems with the USB 1.1 cable, but I thought that it was finally upgraded to a 2.0 cable. It wasn't, so I used the LAN connection and the movement took FOREVER! While most programs were moved correctly, some were not and had to be reinstalled. If I had to do it over again, I would use the transfer utility included with Vista (or at least the HP version of Vista). On a positive note, when the transfer setup failed, the support was excellent.