J
JanineMarchese
Guest
Summary:
Originally The below post was posted by Johan Ole Svensson as the result of an internal Survey on his part.
Sadly he made the mistake to just point to the excellent answer over at "Experts Exchange" but "Experts Exchange" have shut down access for users without a paid account.
I therefore contacted Johan and got the answer from him.
I'll post his original survey, questions and findings here, because I find this needs to be publicly available, as Johans findings has been a tremendous timesaver to us.
Original post from Johan:
“
Over the spring we conducted a user migration program “survey”. Both for implementation in our SCCM environment but also as to ascertain what possibilities we have to do migrations on the fly.
Often we need to migrate users to another PC without reinstalling the PC and we do have scripts that makes us capable of running USMT on the fly - run from, and storing to, a USB disk.
After a preliminary search on Google, we decided mainly to focus on:
USMT (as it is part of SCCM)
Forensit TransWiz and
Laplink PCmover Express, endorsed by Microsoft.
There are many other user migration solution providers, some part of deployment solution packages, some not. We checked a bunch, but Forensit and Laplink carry some weight and you can find many recommendations in forums etc. especially for Forensit. Both are commercial products
None of the two integrates in SCCM but Transwiz can theoretically be used with SCCM, as it can be run by a command line. We mainly decided to test them for “on the fly” purposes though.
USMT
Settings for most research applications we use, like Jitter, Endnote and Reference manager migrates perfectly with our own xml files.
But USMT has some real world technical issues both as to migration capabilities as well as the maintenance that has degraded alarmingly over the last years with Windows 10. Main issues:
We see BIG issues with the user interface migration (Tiles, Start menu, taskbar) that messes up.
AppX Application settings isn’t migrated.
Firefox and Chrome migrations are fixed but Firefox has to be the exact same version or it fails.
We need to check logs manually (we do it with a script) to make sure the profile backed up OK.
Forenzit and Laplink
We have tested both Forensit and Laplink out of the box in different scenarios, from Windows 7 to 10, Windows 10 to Windows 10 to/from domains and to Azure.
Overall, both Transwiz and PCMover Express works with local accounts and domain profiles in the sense that you can login afterwards. (Not all tools we tried worked. Some not at all!!)
Surprisingly both above seem to more or less just copy everything over but as we do not want user account profiles with extensive amounts of simply junk coied over, cache files, temp files etc. this is not a good scenario.
Forensit issues
Most of our custom program settings did not migrate,
PC’s with Office 365 account had a totally crashed Outlook and we had to reinstall the PC.
No help offered: ForensiT Forums: Import Outlook PST Data to Office 365
Migration to Azure simply does not work. Forensit are the only company we found offering migration to Azure but as far as we got it does not work.
Laplink issues
Most of our custom program settings did not migrate or the application would not start afterwards.
PC’s with Office 365 had a totally crashed Outlook and we had to reinstall the PC.
Laplink offers 24 hour support but during the 30 day test period we did not get any of our issues solved.
NO Microsoft Support
As Microsoft Premium support member we also had another surprise down the road. Microsoft does not assist with any issues after using third party migration software. Including Laplink that Microsoft endorses.
They simply refused to assist with our Office 365 issues after learning that we used a third party tool.
Conclusion
As you can probably sense, we’re disappointed. Not surprised though. The way Microsoft has smack implemented their “mobile interface” and insist on making deep technical changes every 6 months, meaning there are 6 different Windows 10 versions out there and add to that Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 plus hundreds of thousands of programs, it actually would be a surprise if it was any different.
Update: We have started using EhlerTechs XML files for USMT.
Help
However wiser, this leaves us back where we started. With USMT.
We now have two people working full time on fixing the remaining issues as described above.
All inputs: Application suggestions and help in general is deeply appreciated.
“
Answers summed up
Basically Johan got in contact with Thomas Ehler at EhlerTech, through using his custom XML files and later had help configuring some extra settings that has made our migrations more complete.
Also Ehlertech has supplied professional tools for running USMT, making the whole process much simpler both running USMT but also regarding error handling.
Continue reading...
Originally The below post was posted by Johan Ole Svensson as the result of an internal Survey on his part.
Sadly he made the mistake to just point to the excellent answer over at "Experts Exchange" but "Experts Exchange" have shut down access for users without a paid account.
I therefore contacted Johan and got the answer from him.
I'll post his original survey, questions and findings here, because I find this needs to be publicly available, as Johans findings has been a tremendous timesaver to us.
Original post from Johan:
“
Over the spring we conducted a user migration program “survey”. Both for implementation in our SCCM environment but also as to ascertain what possibilities we have to do migrations on the fly.
Often we need to migrate users to another PC without reinstalling the PC and we do have scripts that makes us capable of running USMT on the fly - run from, and storing to, a USB disk.
After a preliminary search on Google, we decided mainly to focus on:
USMT (as it is part of SCCM)
Forensit TransWiz and
Laplink PCmover Express, endorsed by Microsoft.
There are many other user migration solution providers, some part of deployment solution packages, some not. We checked a bunch, but Forensit and Laplink carry some weight and you can find many recommendations in forums etc. especially for Forensit. Both are commercial products
None of the two integrates in SCCM but Transwiz can theoretically be used with SCCM, as it can be run by a command line. We mainly decided to test them for “on the fly” purposes though.
USMT
Settings for most research applications we use, like Jitter, Endnote and Reference manager migrates perfectly with our own xml files.
But USMT has some real world technical issues both as to migration capabilities as well as the maintenance that has degraded alarmingly over the last years with Windows 10. Main issues:
We see BIG issues with the user interface migration (Tiles, Start menu, taskbar) that messes up.
AppX Application settings isn’t migrated.
Firefox and Chrome migrations are fixed but Firefox has to be the exact same version or it fails.
We need to check logs manually (we do it with a script) to make sure the profile backed up OK.
Forenzit and Laplink
We have tested both Forensit and Laplink out of the box in different scenarios, from Windows 7 to 10, Windows 10 to Windows 10 to/from domains and to Azure.
Overall, both Transwiz and PCMover Express works with local accounts and domain profiles in the sense that you can login afterwards. (Not all tools we tried worked. Some not at all!!)
Surprisingly both above seem to more or less just copy everything over but as we do not want user account profiles with extensive amounts of simply junk coied over, cache files, temp files etc. this is not a good scenario.
Forensit issues
Most of our custom program settings did not migrate,
PC’s with Office 365 account had a totally crashed Outlook and we had to reinstall the PC.
No help offered: ForensiT Forums: Import Outlook PST Data to Office 365
Migration to Azure simply does not work. Forensit are the only company we found offering migration to Azure but as far as we got it does not work.
Laplink issues
Most of our custom program settings did not migrate or the application would not start afterwards.
PC’s with Office 365 had a totally crashed Outlook and we had to reinstall the PC.
Laplink offers 24 hour support but during the 30 day test period we did not get any of our issues solved.
NO Microsoft Support
As Microsoft Premium support member we also had another surprise down the road. Microsoft does not assist with any issues after using third party migration software. Including Laplink that Microsoft endorses.
They simply refused to assist with our Office 365 issues after learning that we used a third party tool.
Conclusion
As you can probably sense, we’re disappointed. Not surprised though. The way Microsoft has smack implemented their “mobile interface” and insist on making deep technical changes every 6 months, meaning there are 6 different Windows 10 versions out there and add to that Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 plus hundreds of thousands of programs, it actually would be a surprise if it was any different.
Update: We have started using EhlerTechs XML files for USMT.
Help
However wiser, this leaves us back where we started. With USMT.
We now have two people working full time on fixing the remaining issues as described above.
All inputs: Application suggestions and help in general is deeply appreciated.
“
Answers summed up
Basically Johan got in contact with Thomas Ehler at EhlerTech, through using his custom XML files and later had help configuring some extra settings that has made our migrations more complete.
Also Ehlertech has supplied professional tools for running USMT, making the whole process much simpler both running USMT but also regarding error handling.
Continue reading...