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If it's a dupe, lemme know and redirect me and I'm on my way guys.

I'm a dev on Visual Studio, I have 2005, 2008 and 2010 installed atm, along with VB6, and SqlServer Dev 2005, 2008 installed as well, not to mention various and sundry developer's tools like Notepad++ and ReSharper and Reflector.

I realize that a lot of the tools I need to reinstall, that's no biggie, but what about all the stuff that's tucked away for me in my profile by Windows, like settings or caches. I can start over, but sometimes that's REALLY handy stuff to have around. Saved RemoteDesktopProfile passwords (I don't recall putting them into a folder anywhere, I just hit the "remember password" button and trust Windows to do the magic). Also my mercurial information (if it's even saved in the profile, which I bet it is.

I know that the User Profile changed from NT5 to NT6, so I'm aware that logging in on the new box will give me a new profile, but what else do I need to be aware of, and how is the best way to migrate all those settings and caches and the like? Any big "gotchas"?

There's also my Outlook PSTs and such too.

For the record, the reason for my move is that my current dev box has decided to start BSODing on me without any prior record. No new devices or new toolkits have been installed, so it's not as simple as (undo whatever you did). We have the other device on the network currently sitting idle, so it's getting swapped in. Fortunately I can move things across the network, having both boxes online at the same time.

Obviously I know how to move the data from my documents etc over, and I kept all my working files in a F:\ drive so I can move that over easily enough, but the rest of the "hidden stuff" is what I'm really focusing on here.

jcolebrand
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2 Answers2

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You want to use the transfer wizard to put all the stuff in your profile in the right spots on your windows 7 system. You can also specify additional folders to migrate at that time (if they are not already selected). the Wizard will also transfer your office files and settings and translate them across versions (although files will not get "upgraded").

Jim B
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  • Ignore previously unenlightened remark, I didn't ACK the link in the answer. I have that, but still I don't know if there's any other order of ops on this transfer of info. – jcolebrand Feb 07 '11 at 17:36
  • Between the report generated by this tool and the settings that it transferred, that was what I really needed. Thanks for the fast response. – jcolebrand Feb 08 '11 at 15:18
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Transferring application settings across operating systems and potentially across application versions is a tough nut to crack. The closer you look at the problem, the tougher it gets.

As Jim B already wrote Microsoft's Easy Transfer (ET) is the obvious choice, obvious because it's from both from Microsoft and free. On the other hand ET is not flexible at all and has its little problems here and there.

Microsoft's "professional" solution is called User State Migration Tool (USMT) and comes without a UI but is fully customizable, geared towards enterprise customers.

There is another product I would like to mention, sepago's Profile Migrator. It tries to combine the easy of use of ET with the capabilites of USMT. Currently it supports mainly roaming profile migrations, but full client data migration (including Outlook PST files, even archives) is in the works. Please note that I may not be fully objective because I am employed at sepago.

Anyway, if you are interested in how to put USMT to work combined with a comparison of Profile Migrator have a look at this blog article: USMT and Beyond - Practical Tips for Your Migration.

Helge Klein
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