File and Settings Transfer Wizard

[Technoid]

File and Settings Transfer Wizard fails with a "can't copy user.dat".

theres 2 other accounts on that computer where it works flawlesly.

Google doesent turn up anything usefull, same with MS

Any ideas?

The computer is running Xp home sp3 DE

[Jammrock]

that crap never works right...or at least it didn't when it first came out.

Are you going from XP to XP or XP to Vista?

[Technoid]

It fails in the collect from old pc mode and I'm going from XP to XP. (same computer after reinstall)

I've mostly given up on that idea and I'll try and fix windows update instead.

And windows update downloads the updates but then fails to install em.

arghh, and dial a fix doesent fix it

[Dilitante1]

what are permissions on the file/folder? you may need to turn off simple file sharing then take ownership via the admin acct to be able to copy/move said files/folders

[Jammrock]

XP to XP is easy. Just log in as the Administrator, or a different administrator as the account you want to collect, and copy the entire profile folder (though I recommend clearing temps and caches first) to a backup location.

To apply it safely to the new rebuilt computer, log in as the backed up user once, then reboot the computer (sometime you can just log off though). Log in as Administrator and delete the user folder CONTENTS, but leave the folder in place (if you delete the folder it will mess up for some reason, sp "del c:\documents and settings\Joe Blow\*.*"). Copy the contents of the backed up folder to the new user directory and viola! All done.

Just log in and everything will be exactly how it was before. Works like a champ every time.

[Sasq]

Tech, I have had the same problem many times here.

grab the program itself - and its associated dll from the system it is going 'to' and throw it on a usb stick.
run *that* usb version from the old pc.

it gets updated everyso often via win updates, and if the version doesn't match exactly, its pooched.

[UtwigMU]

Just grab entire user profile with some file manager that doesn't quit copying on error (Total Commander, etc...).

The tricky part can be mail and account settings if they're using Outlook Express. I usually migrate people who don't use Outlook from Office to Thunderbird since it's more robust and has some anti-spam filtering capabilities. First import into thunderbird, then backup thunderbird profile, then restore it to thunderbird on new install.

You can also try cloning drive (connect another HDD, that is bigger, boot of Knoppix, dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb), then reinstalling on the old drive, starting transfer wizard from new computer to prepare disk. You can use USB floppy, then connect old drive and collect data from there.

[Technoid]

Just to dispell some missunderstanding;

on one single account on the OLD install it fails to grab/copy/take "user.dat".

as that is the registry/settings file I haven't bottered with going past that step.

I have tried older versions of the "file and settings transfer wizzard" , no go, same error.

what are permissions on the file/folder? you may need to turn off simple file sharing then take ownership via the admin acct to be able to copy/move said files/folders

If I'm logged into that account using the wizzard, shouldent I have permissions to my "own" user.dat file?

And to elaborate on that: The user.dat file is normally not copyable while in that acc but the migration wizzard does it anyway.

but what's irks me is that the wizzard succeds on 2 accounts but not on the last!!