This is great to see so many new people helping new people and so on so forth!

But I wonder...don't you think people would learn their lessons from others seeing how many people have had problems with yet another Microsoft blunder? I'm not insulting anyone, I'm just saying. I know I found this helpful in learning never to use FAST, so thank

The best of luck to all of you!

I had the same problem having run the File and Settings Transfer Wizard on a heavily infected PC, which I then formatted and attempted to restore the data. Following the advice found all over the internet I obtained every different version of "migwiz.exe" (5 different ones) and even downloaded and tried the "fastconv" utility. Absolutely nothing would work.

My further research led me to the Microsoft User State Migration tool, which is a command line version of the same application and is intended for network administrators involved in migrating users from older versions of Windows to XP (the latest version also supports Windows 2003). Success at last!!!

For the benefit of the many other people I found posting cries for help on forums all over the internet I have outlined the steps below; I have assumed a limited knowledge of command line utilities because I discovered that many people asked for assistance in this also ;)


1. First go to the Microsft User State Migration website and download the utility from the link on the page below (I used version 2.60 but I assume that later versions will also work as well):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopde...rstateusmt.mspx

2. Install the program using the defaults.
3. Open a Command prompt: "Start -> Run -> cmd.exe"
4. Navigate to the loadstate directory: "cd\usmt\bin"
5. Run "loadstate" with the store path as the parent directory of your "USMT2.UNC" directory. (For example, if your data is in C:\USMT2.UNC then the store path will be C:\)

If the EXACT same user profile does not exist on the new PC then include the "/lac" switch (local account create) and "/lae" (local account enable).

As an example, if you backed up the data belonging to "Fred B" from the old machine but have not created a user with that name on the new machine, and you have copied the USMT2.UMC directory to the root of the C drive your command will be:

loadstate c:\ /lac /lae


There are plenty of other command line options, but these are aimed at network administrators, and they can be explored by reading the included help files or by running "loadstate /?" at the command line. The utility also allows you to select specific files to extract but this relies on you creating various .inf files for it to reference. (I also used the /test option because it offered to run more quickly but make sure you have another copy of the USMT2.UNC directory somewhere because a power failure during the process will render the data inaccessible!).

Now it's a case of waiting for the utility to complete. If it fails check the "loadstate.log" file and check your file path and options. (Remember to point the store path at the parent directory as the application will look in that directory for the USMT2.UNC directory.)

Once it has completed you should now have a new user created on your PC with the same name as the user on the old PC and all the files and settings that you selected when you ran the File and Settings Transfer Wizard will have been restored under that user login.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Steve, ezipc.co.uk

How many people go research the software before using it? When I got a new PC FAST worked fine for me, so I didn't hesitate to use it again..... as I had fine success before.

I'm not an IT professional, and don't have time to read up on everything out there, so I start searching for help AFTER I'm up the creek.

Just my situation anyway

I've tried absolutely everything with fastconv.exe, and no matter what I always got a error with a corrupt transdb.

But I think I've bl**dy cracked it (for me at least)!

I updated to the latest version of Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (FAST) by using [color=#3366FF]!KB896344![color=#000000]This is technically to provide support for migrating 32bit to 64bit systems. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896344

!Whether it's critical or not, i did a reboot before anything else!

I then ran FAST on the new machine, to create a backup for the new machine.
I then went to the new USMT2.UNC folder, and copied my original IMG*****.DAT files into it, but not the status file! This I left as the new one which had been written during the latest backup.
I then tried the restore using the new version of the wizard, pointing at the folder holding this new USMT2.UNC, and success.

I don't provide any guarantees, but it got there for me.

Regards and All The Luck In The World.