Question

[jrossi]

Thanks for allowing me to register. I have been using XAMPP for a year now on a XP system and I run WEB and a PHP (MySQL) forum with a SSL Certificate. I would like to be able to move my current operations from a Windows XP to Windows 10 with a new hard drive. I am trying to find some useful information and not having any good luck. I am wondering how I should go about doing the move and possible upgrade my from current version to the latest version and keeping all the data and sql data the same without destroying anything. Any help would be appreciated it.

Thanks in Advance,
Jeff

[Nobbie]

There is no standard upgrade procedure for all installations, as there are so many different configurations and datasets and scripts, each and everything must be upgraded carefully. I can only give you a path how to proceed:

1) first of all: do a backup.
2) second: see first
3) third: see first
.... (yes, looks weird, but actually there are many many people out there not doing backups - and after they destroyed their installation, they are upset....).

4) Make a copy off all your HTML files and php scripts (i.e. make a separate copy of the htdocs folder).

5) Make an SQL backup of all your Databases (this is by far the most sophisticated part of the upgrade). It depends of course on the software and script you installed, which Databases are to be backup'd. In some cases (Joomla for example) the software itself provides administration tools in order to backup all Databases (and later on to restore the data). It also comes with a documentation how to proceed. If there is no such tool, you might export/import Databases with the help of PhpMyAdmin or simply with command line tools (mysqldump.exe, mysql.exe etc.).

6) Un-install the old Xampp release. It might be necessary, also to edit the Windows Services and delete the Apache and the MySQL services. Of course it is even better to keep the old Xampp and the PC and to run an installation on a new PC.

7) Install new Xampp release.

8) Restore all htdocs files (i.e. you might try to replace the whole htdocs folder by your copy).

9) Restore/import all SQL Databases. This is the counterpart to 5) and may get difficult.

10) Depending on your previously installation, you might have to adapt some configuration files (i.e. php.ini or my.ini or httpd.conf and included files), if you did changes to some of these files in the old Xampp version.

Last not least - try to start Xampp and try to run your projects. If it runs quite out of the box you are done, if not, you have to follow the error messages and try to find out, what is going wrong. Maybe you have to upgrade your scripts and projects as well, as they possibly are not supported by current PHP releases etc. etc. etc. - i cannot predict what may go wrong. In that case you do not succeed to upgrade, it is very very usefull still to have the old Xampp environment as a fallback. Sometimes it may happen, that your software is not supported by newer PHP releases and there is no way for upgrade (this usually happens to badly maintained projects).

[Nobbie]

P.S.: I wonder that your current installation is running on WIndows XP. That means, you are running quite an old Xampp version, as WindowsXP already is not supported anymore since many releases. If do NOT want to upgrade your Xampp installation as well, you may try to copy the whole Xampp folder from WindowsXP to Windows10 and thats it!