PokerTracker

Following a hard disk failure I now have a new disk with PT4 installed. I have an old disk with both PT3 and PT4 installed, together, presumably, with their hand databases. Stupidly, I don't think I ever did a backup on either of the old disk installations.
Is there any way to migrate the data from the old disk (PT4 and/or PT3) to PT4 on my new disk?

Postgresql installation is what matters, installations of PT3 and 4 are of no use in recovery alone (you can just reinstall those from the internet). Hopefully your postgresql installation folder is intact.

on the new hard disk you must have installed the identical major.minor postgresql version as you were using on the old hard disk. eg. 8.4.12 it is fine to install/use the latest 8.4.x, but not 9.x.x. Hopefully that's clear.

Once you have the correct postgresql version installed (you can tell by it's folder name in \program files)

use services.msc and stop the postgresql service.

copy the \data subfolder from the old one, directly over the \data folder in the new.

use services.msc and start the postgresql service.

it should now have all your old databases present

Once you've moved the PostgreSQL data folder as _dave_ suggests, install PokerTracker and in Database > Database Management click New then 'Browse to existing database' to reconnect to your databases.

Very many thanks for the prompt response. Have downloaded and installed an 8.4 version and moved the data folder as you suggested. Now, however, the Postgresql server won't start and PT4 therefore (I assume) can't connect to it.

Any further advice?

You have to do it in the other order first - move then install to the directory you moved to. Did you do it in the proper order? Is your server running?

Moved my data directory from the PostgreSQL installation on the old disk to the same place on the new disk. Installed 8.4; it detects the data directory, and says that it will use the related settings for installation. This appears to go OK. However, at the end services.msc shows the process as 'starting', and various aspects of the whole system become very slow, some icons not showing; I have had to uninstall PostgreSQL to get the system back to normal behaviour.

Really grateful for the help so far, and any more suggestions.

Click Start type Event Viewer and click on it when it appears. Expand Windows Logs in the left panel and click Application. In the top center pane you should see errors relating to PostgreSQL. Can you tell me what the error text for those errors is please?

I get the following (in chronological order):
"The description for Event ID 0 from source PostgreSQL cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

Waiting for server startup..."

"The description for Event ID 0 from source PostgreSQL cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

2014-09-15 20:12:52 GMTFATAL: could not remove old lock file "postmaster.pid": Permission denied
2014-09-15 20:12:52 GMTHINT: The file seems accidentally left over, but it could not be removed. Please remove the file by hand and try again."

"The description for Event ID 0 from source PostgreSQL cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

Timed out waiting for server startup".

I have actually found a backup now which is not too old, but if it is possible to resurrect the whole database that would be great.

sounds like you just need to manually delete the postmaster.pid file

I'd definitely recommend starting there as well. You can find the postmaster.pid file in the PostgreSQL data folder. If you still have trouble after that, check to make sure the postgres service user has read/write access to the PostgreSQL data folder -- it does need that and the server won't start without it.