Transferring Favorites and passwords from 95 to XP

[Jack Gillis]

A neighbor just got a new machine with XP to replace an old, slow, 95
machine. It is up and running well. How can he transfer, from the 95
machine to the new machine, the remembered passwords to the websites in
Favorites that require them? (I'm assuming those passwords are stored
in some file on the 95 machine but don't have a clue to which one.

I do have Safe Mail that will allow us to save the 95 Favorites and
restore them to the new Favorites but I don't know if that will transfer
the remembered passwords. I doubt it.

 

[purplehaz]

You'll have to retype in the passwords. There is no easy way to transfer
them. They are encrypted in the registry, I believe.

 

[Jack Gillis]

Thank you, Purplehaz. I was afraid that was going to be the case.

 

[Norm]

Aren't logins and passwords to websites like yahoo, pogo games, etc stored
in cookies. I seem to recall having to redo all those passwords when I
deleted my cookies. I wouldn't stake my life on it though.

 

[Jack Gillis]

Hmm! Sounds reasonable. I just noticed I have a number of cookies for
sites I use that require passwords but the passwords don't appear
anywhere in the text. Perhaps they are encoded. Will play around with
some to see what happens.

Thank you very much for the tip.

 

[purplehaz]

Some are, but I thought he was referring to the auto-complete function in IE
where it asks to save your passwords when you enter them on a website, so
that next time you just type in the user name and the password comes up
automatically.

 

[purplehaz]

You're welcome.

Thank you, Purplehaz. I was afraid that was going to be the case.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Yes, it's true. Nobody should ever rely on cached passwords to remember
them -

 

[Alex Nichol]

You'll have to retype in the passwords. There is no easy way to transfer
them. They are encrypted in the registry, I believe.

Some for websites just *might* be in cookie files - it might be worth
trying to copy those from the cookie folder of the old machine to the
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\cookies folder of the new one

 

[Jack Gillis]

Some for websites just *might* be in cookie files - it might be worth
trying to copy those from the cookie folder of the old machine to the
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\cookies folder of the new one

Thank you, Alex. That certainly seems a reasonable approach as there is
nothing to lose by it.