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Thanks for working on everything, especially the PSU issues. Taking it on board!

Pull what data you can from the old drive and reinstall all your programs on the new setup.
Programs can’t and shouldn’t be transferred. It’s better to set them up fresh, irrigardless of the hassle and effort.

Know of any quick and maybe easy way of printing out installed apps?

I’m with you. And that phone call started in Oregon, went through India, to London and took for ever, or at least maybe 4 hours!

What about all the currently installed apps?

Thanks to all. I’ve now recast my issues into two different requests because, in part, from the very helpful information from y’all and from Photoshoppers on other sites. One question addresses the OS issues in the changeover; the other, certain specific hardware issues.

I found myself constrained by three hardware issues as you will note:
The ability to handle at least up to 64 GB of memory
ATX size only, not extended
generous number of ports internal, external, eSATA, USB 2 & 3, IEEE 1394.
And handling these issues helped constrain my choices. Have I done well?

Sorry I did not get in the weeds enough.
The PS is from June 2012.
My current set of HDs on this machine.
The C: drive is Hitachi 750 GB/7200/32MB, SAta-3g. Built Feb 2008
The F: drive is SeaGate Barracuda ST2000M001/1.5 GB/7200/64mb Installed June 2009
The G: drive is SeaGate Barracuda ST2000M001/ 2TB/7200/64MB. Installed Dec 2012

I do a bit of Premier and will in the future do more. More and more family photography is in video these days.
My thought on the HDs is to replace the current C: drive with a 200+GB SSD for all the EXEs plus the Elements catalog. (I prefer the keep catalogs off the C: drive but the speed up and the newer generation of DB programming probably leans toward hosting both together on an SSD.) That small drive now used as a the C: could be fully dedicated as a scratch drive and when it dies, well, it won’t hurt too much.

I have a number of external derives, several of which can support USB3 and/or eSATA. I’d want any new mobo to have a number of of USB3 & eSATA ports (and USB2 ports as well).
I have built all my ‘puters since 1988. I agree totally that I can do better to my specs than buying from whomever. I’ll look into the 2011 with an x79. It might break the bank but, heh, I only build every 5 or so years.
On Photoshop sites, the consensus is at least 16GB RAM and a lot of folks are up to 64 GB. FYI: (The first hard drive I attached to an IBM PC was 10 MB and required a patch to DOS 2.2. Times they are a-changing.) My current 4 GB RAM, max for the mobo, is known apparently to be too low for a number of PS functions, regardless of scratch space!
Do you think the PS will support this configuration?

My file naming convention is
for digital photos: YYYYMMDD_[name of photographer]_original camera-supplied file name I have photos in the family regularly coming in from various people or, for that manner, from my various cameras.
for images scanned on the flat bed scanner: YYYYMMDD (if known) or 00000000 if not)_SCAN_event or primary person or document identifying info (like Betsy’s birth certificate)
for images from slides or photoCDs or whatever: YYYYMMDD (or as above)_(SLIDE or CD or whatever)_and event or primary person or whatever.
My folder technique is simple. For digital input I have a folder for the first half of a year; and another for the second half of each year. Scanned or internet-acquired pictures (like from family) go folders describing the source. Mom’s black album. Bill’s photos. Trip to the Serengeti album (pre-digital world), etc. I can then use the database to to tag & search with a wide variety of terms.
I have melded my 50,000+ images into Photoshop Elements (12 at this point) which allows me an extensive set of tools to search in all sorts of ways including by geography and event grouping. There is also a handy editor function which I don’t use often (Photoshop CS 6 and CC are my editors of choice) but which has some quick fixes for scanned images and more. The actual folder in the OS is not super needed — but can be accessed and modified from within Elements.

I don’t use BitLocker and probably won’t. Would simply deleting this app prevent the problem? Win7 64 & 32 bit.

I am not knocking Picasa. It has improved immensely since GOOGLE acquired it. Two issues (one shared now by ADOBE):
A) What happens when you don’t have internet access?
b) Have you been following GOOGLE’s court arguments AGAINST internet privacy?

Also, my speed and the size of the holdings I have (over 45,000 images) militate against an on-line solution. Besides, I’ve been using Adobe products since they came out with this idea of “layers.” Late 1980s I believe.

I used a number of different DBs but settled on Organizer 10 years ago. The ability to search against whatever I find of interest expands the usefulness of the tool. Many people in your shoes use Photoshop Light Room because it will search just on free-form key words, file names, and dates. Plus it is a great photo editor. You might want to give it a try.

FYI: a major problem with only sorting in the OS by folder names (dates in your case) alone is that hundreds of files will have the same file names (like IMG_1234). One miss in filing and you stand to lose images because computers really don’t like files with the same names. Having a lot of experience in the game, I highly recommend that you name each and every file with the YYYYMMDD + (name of camera) + camera’s file name, e.g. 20130906_7D_IMG_1234. If you also scan or photograph old pictures or documents and such, try to get the dates, at least the year + title. Using this format for each file means that there can never be a loss due to same name conflict (although on some scans I had fun once). A side benefit is that files sort automatically by data and camera when lumped together. Fortunately Bridge, Elements, Photoshop and LightRoom do support making these changes — Bridge is my choice.
Camera: CANON 60D and Panasonic LUMIX (in car, kayak, on beach/swamps). Scanner: Epson Perfection V700 PHOTO

Just a question of curiosity: what photo editors/databases do you use?

The only download for use with Thunderbird, that I have found, requires a “downloader” with attached “options” for “extras”. I’d like to work through Thunderbird since it already has a Spam flag. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily.

Two things, first my anti-virus program will not accept the downloader needed to download the knujon app. Love it!!
Second, changing e-mail addresses is a huge pain especially if everything goes into that one bucket. The answer is to set up a number of e-mail accounts. One for family and close friends. Another for established business relationships (banks, stores, suppliers, etc). Another for unverified contacts (I have one for trash@[domain name]). And so forth. If the trash account gets hit, look over the sites which are worthy of moving to a new address and then blow that address away away. Meanwhile your really important addresses are much less likely to get hit.

Thanks a bunch. Let’s see if I can make sense of it when I’ve time. Right now the “faster I go; the behinder I get!”

Thanks, Paul. I’ve done a quick search and have not found this folder name. There are more things I can do but not for a few days. Would you happen to know some of the folder/file names where e-mails and addresses might be kept? Thanks, again.