Thread: How to transfer application settings to a different computer/installation

I’ve seen a few threads asking how to transfer the uTorrents settings/torrents to a new Windows installation, so I decided to make a tutorial. This tutorial works not only for uTorrent but for most other Windows applications. For example, you can copy your entire Skype settings and history or Firefox profile, including settings, bookmarks, history, etc, to a different computer/installation. Yes, it also works between different computers, so if you have 2 computers at home, you can transfer software settings between them.
The tutorial is intended to work both on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 (for Vista it’s the same as in 7).

Now to the tutorial:
There is a folder in which Windows stores most of the software’s settings by default. It has different names in the different versions of Windows, but the shortest way of accessing it is to write this in address bar in Windows Explorer:

%APPDATA%

Works both in XP, Vista and 7. In Vista or 7 you can directly write it in the Start menu search bar and it will open the folder.
The full location for Windows 7 is:

C:\Users\_yourusernamehere_\AppData\Roaming

and for Windows XP is:

C:\Documents and Settings\_yourusernamehere_\Application Data

Where you replace _yourusernamehere_ with your actual username.
When you open the folder, you should see now different folders with different names of some familiar applications. This is the folder where most Windows applications store their settings. Open the uTorrent folder it and you should see a bunch of files and torrents.
If you make a backup of the uTorrent folder, and then copy it in %APPDATA% in the other computer/installation, all of your settings and torrents will be the same.
Keep in mind that the download location should be the same on the new installation if you are doing this with uTorrent. If your downloaded files are located at D:\Downloads\ , the settings stored at the AppData folder tells uTorrent to look for them at this location. So if after the installation they are at E:\Downloads, it won’t work.
If the drive letters are messed up after the reinstallation, you need to go to

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools\Computer Management

and change the letters from “Disk Management”.
I recommend before a complete reinstallation to make a full backup of the whole AppData folder, so you can get anything you want from there after the installation.
This won't work in a few cases, because some applications store settings in the registry or in an .ini file in their directory, but most applications use AppData so it will work just fine.

Hi,

I will give it a try when i want to do format for my system.
Thanks :)

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