Welcome back to IT free training course for Windows 7. In some cases you may want to upgrade
to Windows 7 but there will be no direct upgrade path. When this happens you can perform a
migrating to Windows 7. When you perform a migrating to windows you copy over settings
and documents. Unfortunately after the migration you are going to have to re-install all your
applications. Depending on which version of windows you
are running may mean that to upgrade to Windows 7, migrating may be your only choice. For
example if you are running windows XP. Also there are no upgrade paths available if you
want to change from a 32-bit version of windows to a 64-bit version of windows. Same said,
if for some reason you want to change from a 64-bit operating system to a 32-bit operating
system. If you purchase new hardware or change hardware
you may also want to perform a migration. For example if you having been using a desktop
computer and you change to a laptop. Situations like these an upgrade is not possible and
your only choice is to perform a migration. When migrating to Windows 7 there are two
different ways to perform the migration. Firstly if you install Windows 7 on the same hardware
that contains an existing operating system, this is called wipe and load. You literately
back up everything you need, wipe the hard disk and then install the new operating system.
Once complete, you copy over your settings, data and reinstall your applications.
The other kind of migration you would perform is when installing on different hardware.
This usually occurs when you purchase a new computer. This is called a side by side migration.
This is normally done when you can put the computers next two each other and copy settings
between them. Having said that the computers do not have to be next to each other. You
could for example back up the settings and data to a network share and then access them
from the other computer. To transfer files and settings from one computer
to anther computer, there are two software tools that you can use. The first is the easy
transfer wizard. This simple wizard is useful when you want a quick solution and only have
a few computers to perform migration on. The next is the user state migration tool or USMT.
The big difference with this tool is that it is scriptable. This makes it better choice
when you have a large number of computers. However it is not as simple to use.
The easy transfer wizard works by saving your settings on the network or to external storage
like a USB drive. If both computers are near each other, you can also use the easy transfer
cable shown here. This cable is a USB cable that is plugged into both computers and allows
you to transfer setting between the two pc's. The easy transfer wizard works with windows
XP, windows Vista and Windows 7 and is included with these operating systems. Even so, it
is best to download the latest version from Microsoft before you use the easy transfer
wizard. The easy transfer wizard works by migrating
user settings and data. However it does not migrate software or applications. Once you
finish using the easy transfer wizard you will need to re-install your applications.
Let's have a closer look at how the easy transfer wizard works.
For this demo I will transfer settings from a windows XP computer running on a 32bit computer
to a Windows 7 computer running 64-bit. Even if I was to upgrade to windows Vista first
and then Windows 7, the change of architecture is not a supported upgrade.
The latest version of the easy transfer wizard requires you to be running windows XP with
service pack 2. Even the original windows XP with no service pack was shipped with a
copy of the easy transfer wizard. When possible, I would suggest installing and downloading
the latest version of the easy transfer wizard so you have access to all the latest bug fixes.
I have already downloaded the latest very of the easy transfer wizard and placed it
on the desktop. The install is a simple one. Run the install program, accept the license
agreement and the easy transfer wizard will be updated. There is a transfer wizard that
comes with windows XP but this is not compatible with Windows 7.
Once updated, the easy transfer wizard can be run from the start menu, all programs,
and then windows easy transfer. Once you are past the welcome screen, you need to select
how you want to transfer your data and settings. The first option allows you to use a cable
connecting the two computers together. If the computers are not next to each other
or you do not have a direct cable connection, the next option allows you to transfer the
files and settings using the network. Failing this you can always store the settings on
removable media like a DVD, USB driver or floppy drive. If you don't have many documents
or you only want to transfer settings over, it may be possible to store all the data on
a small removable device. For this example I will store the setting
in a folder on the c drive and then manually copy this folder from one computer to the
other. If you wish, you can also configure a password. Once you have determined where
you want to store the data, on the next screen you can select what settings you want to save.
The first option transfers all user accounts, files and settings. This is a good option
to select if your computer is used by more than one person. The next option transfers
settings from only the currently logged in user. The last setting, advanced options allows
me to pick and choose which users and settings that I want to transfer.
If I select this option, you can see on this screen I can select which items I want to
transfer. By default, windows will attempt to copy all your settings and your documents,
but if you want to add additional options you can select the options at the bottom to
add additional files and folders. Currently I am logged in as the user admin,
at the bottom you can see that the user account c e o is also selected. If you had multiple
user accounts you could select and deselect the ones that you want. Once you have determine
what you want to transfer, windows will capture the settings and files and save them. Once
the wizard is complete, I can now switch to my Windows 7 computer.
The easy transfer wizard is already installed on Windows 7 and as long as you have the latest
updates installed, you should not need to install it. If I now open windows explorer,
I have copied the data captured from windows easy transfer to the c drive. To use it, I
simply need to double click on it. You will notice that once loaded I can select
which users I want to transfer. If you select advanced options you can change the accounts
the user will be transferred to. Once all the settings have been transferred you may
be asked to reboot the computer. Once the computer has rebooted any user account that
were required to be created have been created and your files and settings have been transferred.
The easy transfer wizard works well when you only have a few computer to transfer files
and settings from, but in an enterprise environment you may want to use different tool.
If you have more than one computer to migrate settings to and from, you may want to consider
using the User State Migration Tool. This tool is included with the Windows Automated
Installation KIT which is available as a free download from Microsoft. This is a command
line tool so it can be used in scripts. In an enterprise environment you may decide to
add this tool to a login script. For example you may configure a user to automatically
run this tool when logged in. When you want to perform a migration you simply login to
the computer using this user. The user state migration tool is harder to
use then the easy transfer wizard but is more scalable so will work with many computers
not just the one. Due to the extra configuration required, you generally would not use the
User State Migration Tool with just one computer. The big disadvantage with the user state migration
tool is that there is no option to transfer settings via a direct cable connection. You
need to store the data created by the user state migration tool on an indeterminate storage,
usually a network drive. There are two executables related to USMT.
These are scan state and load state. Scan state saves the settings while load state
loads the data saved by scan state and applies it to the computer. If I now change to my
server that has Windows Automate tools install. The first thing I need to do is share out
the directory containing the executables. By default this under the tools directory
located in the Windows AIK program directory. Once this directory has been shared I can
access scan state tool from my windows XP computer.
If I now change to my windows XP computer and open a command prompt, I can run scan
state to capture files and settings from this computer. First off all I need to enter in
the file name and path for the scan state executable. Following this I need to enter
in a folder to save the data to. I have created anther share on that server to hold the migration
data. The next two parameters are XML files. These
files provide the configuration information for the tool. The first one defines the application
settings that will be captured. Microsoft provides a file for you to use, but you are
free to customize it how you want to. The next XML file determines which users will
be captured. There are anther two XML files not shown here you can customize to your needs.
The scan state will save all the settings and files from this computer specified in
the XML files to the shared folder I specify. Now that these settings have been saved, I
can now change to my Windows 7 computer. Before I can import the settings, I will first
browse to the network share that I saved the settings to. If I open the folder you will
notice that there is an easy transfer wizard file. The files created by scan state are
compatible with the easy transfer wizard so you can import them using this tool.
For the purpose of the exercise, I will instead import the files and settings using the load
state tool. To do this, open a command prompt making sure that you open the command prompt
as an administrator. For the load state executable, the parameters are the same. Specific the
location containing the data and also the two XML files. Load state will now start importing
all the files and settings. This concludes migrating two Windows 7. In
the next video I will look at way you can customize Windows 7. If you have a lot of
Windows 7 installs to perform and you need to make changes to the base install, there
are many tools for Windows 7 you can use to change the install media. Once changed, when
you perform a clean install of Windows 7 it will already be customized to your needs.