On Tuesday, 22 November 2016 09:46:40 UTC, dennis@home wrote:
On 22/11/2016 08:17, Jeff Layman wrote:

Not from his OP - there was no mention of a backup, hence my cautionary
approach concerning the HDD, and the (snipped) paragraph about creating
backups.


A new computer is an opportunity to test the backups in anger. An
opportunity that shouldn't be missed.

Take the latest backup and restore all the data onto the new machine and
check it. Then start the backups on the new machine and check them
before you do anything to the old machine.

yes that's the sort of way I'd go about it, depending on how old the old PC is.
But I;m a Mac person so what I;d do would be to connect the two computers together using an ethernet lead to a hub then go to migration assistant and use that, which will transfer all users files over and network setting etc... and anything and everything else unless you choose otherwise.

But sometimes it's nice to start completely afresh with a new computer.
With this method I would recover the old files off teh old computer when I needed them or noticed they were missing,a s sometimes you don;t reslly need all the old installs of flash and others, just get the lastest.
Paid for software might be more risky though so be aware of serial numbers you might have lost track of and the like over the years.