Source
r/sysadmin•
dVnt

Daunting task: WinXP - Win7 Migration

I work at an organization which allows and, at times, even encourages people to use their computers as personal machines. This means gigabytes of personal data (pictures, videos, music, ect...) on each staff member's laptop.

I've been tasked with upgrading these staff members to a newly created Win7 image.

My input to the higher-ups has been to advocate that each staff member be made responsible for their own personal data. This way reimaging becomes a trivial matter instead of marathon sessions of hand-holding.

Is there any good software that I can suggest which will backup these people's data for their personal purposes? i.e. not to any standardized and supported backup repository or anything.

What about using MS's built in support for migration from WinXP to Win7. What kind of infrastructure needs to be in place for these methods?

Posted Aug 22, 2011, 1:49 PM UTC

1859
Arlieth[LOPSA] CorgiOS Specialist•

Be careful about the transfer of Outlook profiles. Some transfer tools (notably, Windows Easy Transfer) will corrupt them. In fact, the suggestion to put them on redirected profiles is not a bad one, though it will kill bandwidth and accessibility for a few hours while the profiles sync up. Also, the files for Outlook's mailbox/address book and the Nickname list (auto-complete addresses) are in totally separate directories, in case you only backup their profile and forget the nickname list. Some users are very attached to that list but will mistakenly call it their address book.

7
turboluvahJr. Sysadmin•

Yeah, users will FREAK if their .nk2 files aren't transfered and "ALL THE EMAILS IN MY ADDRESS BOOK ARE GONE!," despite it just being shortcuts and not their actual address book.

RAGE.

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radeky•

Yep. I've run into that several times.

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dVntOP•

Thanks for the heads up!

Are you aware of any issues regarding the use of USMT 4.0 and Outlook Profiles?

They would mostly be upgrading from Office 2003 to 2010, if that matters.

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xenios•

I forgot to metion, you need to download this hotfix for usmt4 if you are going from 2010: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2023591 There is another hotfix for outlook 2003 -> 2010 in that link as well.

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dVntOP•

"From 2010"?

For clarity:

The one in the link you provided needs to be installed on the destination machine to be used to update USMT on the share that I'm using to copy the tool down to the source machine, for an Office 2010 to Office 2010 migration to be successful?

Likewise, the other hotfix linked within that article (this) needs to be installed on the destination machine before performing a migration?

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xenios•

The first link is a hotfix to USMT4 that will add office2010 definitions. So after this hotfix you can load or save state to or from office 2010. (ie. 2003, 2007, or 2010 to 2010) Without this hotfix settings would not migrate to 2010 because 2010 wasnt out when USMT4 was released.

The second link is a hotfix for outlook 2010 that will fix any issues with files migrated from 2003.

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Arlieth[LOPSA] CorgiOS Specialist•

I haven't used USMT myself, so I wouldn't know. Just tread with caution and a lot of backup slack. My users' Outlook profiles are mission-critical (and often over 6gb in size -_-) so I learned to be extremely paranoid about doing anything with them. I wonder if I could enforce an auto-archive GPO in Outlook...

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PanchoVilla1•

One thing you could do is redirect their My Documents folder to a network share. Give it least a few hours or a day for all the files to copy to the server, then you don't have to worry about wiping out what's on their machines. Just make sure they're all aware that only things in their My Documents folder (incl My Pictures, My Music, etc.) will be preserved. You can set this all up as a Group Policy Preference.

I have heard of people using the migration tool, but I'm not sure what all it does. I haven't researched it. This link may be helpful to you. Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7

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dVntOP•

Yeah, I don't have any experience with it either. (USMT) Thanks for the link!

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radeky•

So,

First: Be thankful that there are now tools that can do this. I did a 2k to XP migration solely by hand (until I got smart and learned how to write a batch script to take care of this for me).

I have a system backup script I can modify a bit and send your way if you're interested.

USMT is a great tool. It does have a bit of a learning curve. If you're in a pinch, might not be the best solution but I recommend it if you can figure it out. Its a really good system for exactly this.

A few things:

  • If you have Exchange, just rebuild the OST files after the system has been imaged. Don't bother migrating it.

  • Make sure whatever you do searches for PST files and .eml files. I've had users store their e-mails INDIVIDUALLY in C:. (Its why i wrote a script that just excludes the shit I know I don't care about).

  • The nk2 file is in: C:\Documents and Settings[User Profile]\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook on XP. This is different than the default OST/PST location of ..[User Profile]\Local Settings\Application Data... as others have stated, users will freak without that file.

  • Users store data everywhere. Be very careful that you don't lose their data. They will be very upset. If you can do a home folder redirect to a server, give users some set period of time and be very clear that anything not in those folders will be lost, that'd be ideal for you. (Gets you almost entirely out of the mix)

  • Do this in stages. Especially if you don't have any help. You're going to have plenty of users with lots of Win 7 questions. Realistically, you're at best going to get through 4 machines yourself per day. Most likely more like 2.

Those are the things i can think off the top of my head. I've been doing Software and hardware migrations since 2005. Its kind of my bread and butter. Let me know if there's anyway I can help.

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dVntOP•

Excellent post; much appreciated!

We have small mailbox limits of 100mb. As a result most of my users have .pst archives of email that can easily reach several gigabytes. However, these archive .PSTs are already located on their home drives on my server (Which ultimately doesn't make a lot of sense, I know. Storage has to be cheaper per unit than in our datacenter then in our remote, onsite Poweredge 2900s, and their backup routines are certainly more rigorous...), so this isn't a huge issue for me.

My first trial run of scanstate.exe ended up with a monstrously unexpected* 27gb .mig file which is ambigously named, "USMT.mig". How am I supposed to delineate between users if they are named generically like this? Did I miss the part where I name them? Is there any way to get it to just name it the same name as the client's hostname?

*Well, half unexpected. I'm glad it didn't take 2 hours for nothing...

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radeky•

I didn't do the USMT work at my last contract, but I feel like they were just named usmt.mig. We were tossing them into folders on our server based on the user's login.

I would recommend running it on one system at a time and just creating those folders as you go.

As to the size. We had that same issue sometimes. That file can be massively large as it grabs install, i386, ProgramFiles, etc. Its all about getting it to exclude what you dont want.

For reference, this is my current list of folders I exclude from a C drive copy via my script: $Recycle.Bin boot "Documents and Settings" MSOCache Recovery "System Volume Information" "Program Files" ProgramData Users Windows Intel Drivers

Note: Thats a win7 machine (XP folders will of course have a few differences). I'm backing up the Users folder via a separate robocopy command, so I exclude the entire folder here.

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dVntOP•

I'm weary of folder redirection. First of all, would this require me to manually create all the respective folder structures, or does it take care of it a la user home drives?

Secondly, this would only be temporary. We don't have the storage space to leave these structures intact. And it also bothers me that there is no finite point of completion with a solution like this. A migration is done when it's done.

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sexual_chocolate•

It'll automatically create all of the folders for you using the user's name. I'd redirect the my docs, my music, my pictures folders as well as bookmarks (people freak out if they don't have their bookmarks!) What version of server are you using?

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dVntOP•

Cool, bitches better recognize!

Server 2003 :-/

I'm still leaning towards USMT 4.0. Most of my users use Firefox or Chrome as a browser and I'm hoping I can get USMT 4.0 to migrate those bookmarks/settings.

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SoupCanDrewWindows Admin•

If you look around the net, you can find bits of code to add to your migapp.xml file to migrate FF and Chrome. We are in process of a 1500 PC migration from XP to 7 and USMT works fairly well. We are running it manually because WDE fucks up the ability to use the USMT portion of SCCM to be able to run the "set it and forget it" upgrades. If you do go that route, make sure you read up on the config.xml, it does wonders.

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technewsreader•

In all honesty 40 machines is not a lot. I would manually copy the entire hard drive of each across the network with robocopy to a smb mount. Do you have a couple terabytes of temporary storage? Store their data and copy it back. Delete it in a couple months when the coast is clear and you believe everything was transferred back.

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dVntOP•

I'm working with the rest of my local storage on the onsite server in building where the migration is taking place -- all 568 gigabytes.

I'm going to capture highly compressed .WIMs. If someone needs anything I can just mount the .wim, and copy the relevant contents to a share for availability.

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technewsreader•

Do you have no budget for this migration? A couple terabyte drives…

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PanchoVilla1•

My suggestion was more of a long-term solution. Ideally the only thing you'd have on the PC and not backed up on the server is programs. Even programs can be backed up onto an applicaton server, etc.

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xenios•

What sort of scale are you looking at?

For the data migration part look into User State Migration Tool (USMT) It will migrate all user files and settings (for supported programs). You can add additional programs by creating your own definitions. The migration files can be kept in place with hardlinks, or stored to any path (unc included). This program will take alot of testing for you to get working smoothly the way you want it. But it works very well once its all setup. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd560801(WS.10).aspx

What I would recommend (though it will be alot of work) is to setup MDT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd407791). You can use MDT to automate every step of this process (backing up state, applying new image, reapplying state, updating system) all at once. MDT has a very big learning curve and will take you a good while to setup but it is totally worth it.

If your company is large I would consider looking into SCCM for computer management which can do everything MDT does (with its help) and much more.

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dVntOP•

Scale = 40-50 people. Typical profile is maybe 4GB. (That's not even an educated guess, just an anecdotal guess.)

Thanks for the answers and links. I jumped into MDT just enough to know what you mean when you say it has a very big learning curve. It's not the technologies which confuse me, but how they all come together.

If your company is large I would consider looking into SCCM for computer management

Our org just bought Kaseya and butchered it to reflect our antiquated processes/methods. SCCM would have been my suggestion if anyone had every solicited my opinion.

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xenios•

Well if you have any questions on how things work feel free to ask. If you do go the MDT route consider joining this mailing list: Click . It is frequented by MVPs as well as a few MS employees.

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dVntOP•

Do you have any experience to share regarding the use of GUI tools listed on USMT 4.0's wikipedia page?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_State_Migration_Tool#GUI_wrappers_for_USMT

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xenios•

I recommend you stick with doing it straight up. Those all look out of date or shitty.

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dVntOP•

Another question:

Can scanstate.exe and loadstate.exe be run from networks shares? The technet articles always seem to refer to running it locally on the source machine.

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xenios•

The USMT files need to be on the system locally. Just create a script that will copy it to the system, set the environmental vars and then run scanstate or loadstate. The mig file that you are making or restoring can be on a UNC path though. If you plan on doing hardlinks instead of mig files you might want to think about doing a full backup of each system before hand just in case.

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hogiewan•

The builtin tool on 7 works pretty well. Just have both up and connected to the network. I used this, but I only had to do 8 machines.

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dVntOP•

Migrating from WinXP to Win7 on the same machine, but thanks for the input.

edit: FWIW, this is referred to as a Refresh in the context of migration. TIL.

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XaositekJack of All Trades•

The Windows 7 Migration Utility works extremely well. Save the .MIG file to a central location, wipe the machine, reload with Windows 7, and restore the files. Even works if moving from a local to domain profile, domain to a local profile, or domain profile to domain profile.

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lordmycal•

I second this. If it's a concern, backup the hard drive to a WIM file on an external drive, then run the tool, then format and install windows. Worst case scenario is you do a full restore from your external drive back to where you were originally.

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pojodojoyou know the nazis made jews wear flair•

Are you doing these machines individually or in batch?

For deploying Win7, you can use Microsoft's tools (MDT 2010 and WDS).

It uses the User State Migration Tool to grab the profile before imaging, converting it, and restoring it.

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dVntOP•

I'm not sure yet, it depends on the methods I choose to use. If I can just tell my users to connect their laptops to ethernet and leave them on over night, and expect a completed backup/migration by morning, then I'd just re-image them all at once... but I'd also want to a full image capture of every machine. I'm not about to let this come back to screw me if something goes wrong with scanstate/loadstate.exe.

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FJCruisinBOFH•

My take on it is this, and it may not work in your environment. Anything that is WinXP is staying WinXP until it's regular hardware lifecycle is over. Anything that is NEW hardware, is getting Win7. That way, you shouldn't have to change anything in your normal plan for how you would upgrade someone's hardware.

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dVntOP•

I wish those politics would play, but alas...

Our plan, it seems, is to not have a plan.

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[deleted]•

write the waver and get them singed! you will lose data some ware.

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dVntOP•

Hmm, this did cross my mind...

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SEA-SysadminDevOps Lead•

Smart advice.

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telecomando2•

I'm about to take on the same task myself. For the most part I don't like to migrate application settings, especially if you're upgrading software versions. Which I'm sure you'll be doing with an XP to 7 Migration. I'm just going to create a boot disk with a script (linux of course) that will image the machine copy the relative contents of the users home folder (my documents, desktop, etc.) to a network share and call it a day.

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SEA-SysadminDevOps Lead•

Given that you're blurring the line between personal/professional use, I'd be inclined to recommend that they purchase a carbonite/mozy kind of product on their own dime. Those services only do files and documents. With this in place, take a backup, image the laptop, and let them pull their files "from the cloud" when they are done. If you present a nice clean, expensive choice, you'll be surprised how many people just opt out, or grab a flash drive and take care of it themselves. It's one thing to allow personal use- it's another to provide migration and backup of personal files!

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dVntOP•

I'm in no position to try and use an angle like this. My users would just throw their hands up in frustration, the leadership here would appease them, and I'd still be stuck with the same problem. The problem is that we don't have policy in place to address these issues in the first place so I have no where to go with this stuff.

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SEA-SysadminDevOps Lead•

Do you have an established cost per GB metric? You may find that one of these hosted backup providers is actually cheaper than in house storage, AND provides an easy off site backup solution! Your leaders may be the ones who buy it! I have very cheap storage so it really doesn't apply to me- but if you're using something like NetApp or EMC, you could pretty much pay trappists to etch your word documents in platinum for the same cost. Take a look at the numbers and see if it makes sense!

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dVntOP•

Do you have an established cost per GB metric?

I don't, I'm not familiar with the SAN in our datacenter.

I appreciate the advice, but the point I'm trying to make is that it is the epitome of futile for someone like me to suggest where money be spent in my org. This is the only power/ability that makes my leadership... well leadership. They certainly don't have any relevant knowledge/expertise on these matters.

A year ago, I laid out an entire onsite NAS backup solution that would start saving us money in less than a year (at RoF of our current solution), increase performance and up-time, as well as provide redundancy, with all the cost analysis and everything and I wasn't given so much as the time of day. Our current strategy involves me going out to remote locations and troubleshooting overpriced Lacie 500gb externals, which are plugged into cheap USB hubs, several times a month.

Grr, you got me started now...

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SEA-SysadminDevOps Lead•

It's ok- I know your pain! Let us know how USMT goes, I guess.

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[deleted]•

Are you running an exchange server? If so mail won't be a worry... do you have a large file server? create a network drive for each user and have them send data there

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dVntOP•

Yeah, their email is on Exchange.

USMT 4.0 is going to be what is used. I don't have time for the hand-holding that would result from such a process.

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[deleted]•

Script it, xcopy c:\documents and settings%usersname% h:

After image

Xcopy h: c:\users%username%

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xenios•

I don't recommend doing this. So many thing have changed in registry / folder structure in windows 7. Doing this will only lead to problems :(

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[deleted]•

Huh, worked for us with no issues, didnt need to touch the registry. That wasn't our exact script though... I think the key is testing tge process and deploying when it is 100% flawless.

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dVntOP•

Too many inconsistencies between WinXP and Win7 user profiles.

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Please_Pass_The_MilkWindows Admin•

How big are your hard disks? If you're dealing with 40-60 Gb drives, straight backup should be easy. If everyone's got a terabyte locally and some are actually using it, well, you're screwed.

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girlgermsWindows Mistress•

Just did something similar at my work - the average laptop user had approximatelyt 10-50GB of data on the machine that needed to be backed up. The whole process was a long one, involvin almost eveyr member of my team and spanning for 6 months.

Best advice I can give - don't take shortcuts, make sure everything is backed up, because that one person who forget will be the one that requires those really important files for the boss the next day.

We used a custom robocopy script to copy all their data up to a server and the reverse script copied it all back down onto the machine.

The profiles from Windows XP to Windows 7 are different, so it's not a simple case of just copying the profile back either - data will need to be moved back in to the correct folders. From what I've seen, the main data for any business/corporate user is:

  • Documents
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Music
  • Application Data (Outlook archives, bookmarks, etc.)
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callmetom•

I've had great success using Easy Transfer for XP (NOT files and settings transfer wizard since that doesn't work in 7) then importing into Win 7.

If outlook is not on an Exchange server I always export email to a new PST then add it (not import) to the new outlook install. Always good to seperate off PSTs now and again to keep them from getting too big.

Just my 2 cents

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aceregen•

Check out IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection? It is decently affordable.

Disclaimer: IBM Sales person here. :p

1