Windows Easy Transfer - Transfer To & From Computers

This might be one of those stupid questions, but in all the threads I've read about using Windows 7 Easy Transfer, I've not seen it actually addressed.... I know that the Easy Transfer process will not actually transfer the installed programs themselves, so do all the desired programs need to be installed on the 'new' computer *before* running the Easy Transfer process? If not, wouldn't the programs installation process just over-write any configurations and settings that were copied from the "old" computer?

-Richard

RHoller said:

This might be one of those stupid questions, but in all the threads I've read about using Windows 7 Easy Transfer, I've not seen it actually addressed.... I know that the Easy Transfer process will not actually transfer the installed programs themselves, so do all the desired programs need to be installed on the 'new' computer *before* running the Easy Transfer process? If not, wouldn't the programs installation process just over-write any configurations and settings that were copied from the "old" computer?

-Richard

RHoller: I don't believe in stupid questions!

I would agree that installing "old programs" after using the Easy Transfer utility would tend to defeat the usefulness of the utility. It can transfer the profile of a user including preferences, depending upon what is selected to save before the transfer, but first the programs themselves should be installed. However some software, like FireFox for example, will not overwrite preferences when it is reinstalled.

Cheers!
Robert

I have been tasked with figuring out how to back up domain user profiles since the powers that be do not wish to use roaming profiles and redirected folders. I have experimented with several utilities which will back up the c:\users\domainuser profile just fine ( well, thats a bit of a fib, my test laptop is workgroup only and i am backing up my profile to a usb drive as a test ) Easy Transfer has been the only thing which has restored the profile perfectly, including all the customizations...IE desktop icons, wallpaper etc. all other attempts have restored the c:\users\username folder but logging in only gives the default profile. In addition, it appends the computer name to the folder. IE c:\users\user gets exported. the local user account is on the pc. The profile is deleted by using another admin account on the profiles tab. I verify that the users folder is gone. When I restore, I get the user folder back, plus one saying user.computername. I am guessing that is why I get the default profile.

So, can this be scripted to run as a scheduled task?
Thanks in advance

No programs or applications? That makes it about as useful as tits on a boar.

Hi, thank you... Can I stop the process before it's completed? At first it said 45 mins, then it jumped to 2 hours now, after running for about 6 hours it says 1 DAY, 4 hours!!!! That's crap! I need to stop it and copy and paste since that can be done in less than an hour. Can I stop it without corrupting my data?

THANKS!!

Will there be a problem transferring from a 32 bit to 64 bit 7

I have a better way to do this I think. I have it up in Google Docs. Not sure if I can make it public as of now.

I have a new laptop that I started manually moving files to, but now I think I want to use the Windows Easy Transfer tool to finish the job. Will Easy Transfer overwrite files already moved to the new computer or will it just duplicate the files making two copies of the same file?

I used WET recently to transfer files & settings to a new computer, W7HP to W7Pro. It worked fairly well (a lot of Start Menu shortcuts were broken) and when a friend asked me about transferring files from his wife's computer to her new Surface Pro I suggested WET to him.

Well it turns-out Windows Easy Transfer, while apparently available for execution, does not work properly between Windows 8.1 devices! Brilliant, Microsoft! How on earth could they screw that up...