Wednesday, 15 March 2017

Migrating Ham Radio Deluxe to a new computer

This is easy to do and is outlined in the HRD manual. Just follow the instructions and all will work ok.

I had reason to re-format my computer. A Windows 10 upgrade to the Windows 10 Anniversary update edition didn't go too well. I think originally upgrading the computer from Windows 7 to Windows 10 with an inplace upgrade wasn't the correct way to go. I had all sorts of issues with soundcards not working 100% afterwards and crackling sounds. When I let it do the anniversary update things went from bad to worse. I let it run for a few months and persevered with its idiosyncrasies.

Then a couple of weeks back (late February 2017) I had had enough. I bought a new 1TB HDD to replace the 2TB HDD I had been using for the C: drive. I kept that so I could retrieve any files off it should it be necessary.

The boot into Windows 10 Anniversary edition was quick and uneventful. When I had it attached to my domain I uninstalled any of the crapware that gets installed by default and installed Avast AV.
The next thing I installed was Ham Radio Deluxe. I restored the backup I had made including the registry files (If you want to backup a working version of HRD in RIg Control go to Tools>Archive and follow the instructions).

I started up the rig and fired up HRD and everything was there, logbook, DM780 settings, Rig control with all the customizations I had made, the lot. I can't see why people make such a big deal out of it. If you follow the instructions in the manual it works first time. Admittedly I tried it on a virtual machine that I had built on another computer to test the process before I tried it for real.

I then reinstalled only the essential software I need on that PC which is:

  • Microsoft Office 2016
  • Google Chrome
  • WSJT-X
  • JTAlert
  • Sketchup 2017
  • Adobe Reader
  • VNC Reader 

and a few other minor pieces of software.

All data files are stored remotely on a server so I had no data to restore.

I made a list of what had been installed and on what date to ensure that if I install anything else and it breaks something I can narrow it down.

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