Profile Migration

[WebMattR]

So, as we're gearing up at work to do a migration at work, I had a question I thought I'd pose to the collective here.

We're going to move from Windows XP to Windows Seven, and are trying to find a tool to easily pull profiles from the XP machines, and move what's usable to Windows 7.

Also, to put the icing on the cake, we're moving from Windows 2000 Domain to a workgroup and then to a brand new 2008 Enterprise domain (though seemingly not relevant, I think).

 

[gregrocker]

Others may have better large-scale migration methods, but the end-consumer tool which works best from XP (if you must use one) is not the built-in XP tool but Win7 Easy Transfer.

I'm posting because we had a failure just last week where XP files using its native transfer tool couldn't be seen in Win7. Of course you'll want to test it before using it for mass migration.

If your PC's use the same programs and setup then you might want to use the SysPrep tool so you only have to do it once by Sysprepping the completed installation HD then migrating it's image: SysPrep to move HD to another computer

 

[Helge]

You might want to take a look at sepago's Profile Migrator. It selectively transfers relevent data and configuration settings from old PCs to new machines without copying all the profile bloat that has accumulated over the years. It supports OS upgrades as well as application upgrades (e.g. from Office 2003 to 2010). Profile Migrator can be run manually or fully unattended from tools like SCCM.

Note: I work for sepago.

 

[Desslok]

Hmm, not sure what your AD, storage and other infrastructure looks like or how many users, etc, but personally looking at your longer term goals I would probably look into something like Quest's Migration Manager. I have seen too many issues during migrations due to SID history, etc.

 

[WebMattR]

So, a slight update on the situation: We've decided not to roll W7 out onto all the machines, though some machines are W7.

It looks like we're taking the machines, disjoining them, slapping some pieces of their profile into a new generic one for them, and then creating a new domain, and slapping those pieces of their profile into a new domain account.

If you ever want to partake in activities that would make any IT Admin in the corporate world twitch, go Public Sector.