I've upgraded to a new computer

Apologies for the brief gaps in posting, but I took the plunge over the weekend to upgrade to a new computer. For several years my old trusty PC has been running on Windows XP, an operating system I have been loathe to leave behind (even though it is no longer supported by Microsoft), but several other factors have finally led me to buy a new PC, this time one operating on Windows 8.1. I had the option to upgrade immediately to Windows 10, but figured I would see how the ground lies with that first, as I have been getting mixed messages about how good an idea that may or may not be.

Up until now I have been using XP on my PC and Vista on my laptop, so was very wary about upgrading. My wife has 8.1, and the screen on her laptop has been terrifying me every time I have looked at it! In fact, the move has been relatively painless. The one major loss that I am feeling is the absence of Outlook Express, I'm still not a big fan of the Outlook.com replacement, though I have established that to access that I  am much better simply going online to look at my emails - the set up there is much more like that of Outlook Express, and I think easier to use.

My real joy though was to discover that I can in fact run Family Tree Maker 2006 on Windows 8.1. Although I use the latest incarnation of Family Tree Maker for my own personal research, FTM 2006 is still my programme of choice for client research, as it has no bells and whistles, and simply does the basic things I need it to. There was a message flagged up saying there was a compatibility issue, but you can choose to run it anyway, and when I do, it works fine (something I have found from lots of online testimonials from other users).

I've kept my old PC, however, because it is a useful hard drive for another back up, and there are a few other older programmes and things I can do on it that I would be scared to try on the new stack - not least the continued upgrade of my family history website, which runs on Tripod (Trellix), which now only allows users to make changes using an older version of Internet Explorer.

So far the user experience has not been at all traumatic - there is a wee bit of a learning curve, but it's more of a gradual slope to climb than a mountain!

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Annoying hard drive failure

I'm definitely having one of those days!

Yesterday I made a somewhat foolish decision to have what some people call "a day off" (it does not happen often!) I took my wife and kids to a place called Dunoon on the Cowal peninsula, not far from Largs via a short hop on a ferry, but bizarrely somewhere we had never visited before, despite being so close. Upon my return I rebooted my computer to check my emails, had a game of Freecell as it all loaded up - and then suddenly it just switched off. On trying to reboot the PC it kept switching off, ending up in some bizarre loop of constant rebooting. I tried a few wee tricks - safe mode, start up disk etc - and still could not get it to start. I took it to the computer shop this morning, and the prognosis is that the hard drive has suffered a catastrophic failure. Bummer.

This time around I have been much better prepared than the last PC failure I suffered, about three years ago. Only three weeks ago I thankfully backed up all my files again onto my external hard drive (bought after the last disaster!), including ten years worth of genealogy research files, various books, articles and more. What I did not back up though were my last few months emails, though thankfully for a while I have been printing off crucial emails, payment notification etc.

Several other things have become handy also - I've been using Google's online calendar instead of one locally on the PC, and have various other files backed up on laptops, iPads and all sorts. The only real disaster was in having to rewrite an article for Your Family Tree that I had spent all of Saturday doing - thankfully on a topic I know like the back of my hand, so easily able to be reproduced today!

So the morals of this story are:

1) Back up your files regularly. (Honestly, don't leave it!)

2) Be wary of the Cowal Peninsula - it may be jinxed. :)

I've transferred all my ops just now to the Battle Bridge (my laptop), and should hopefully be back up and running properly by Wednesday or so. Thankfully a bit of preparation after the last disaster has paid dividends for this one. Not a great lesson one wants to be taught though!

Chris

New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)