File and settings transfer wizard - need help 1

[brokenhalo]

Ok heres the scenario... A friend of mine wanted me to wipe out his computer with XP Home and install XP Pro. He needed to keep some pictures and other misc stuff and wanted to keep IE settings and things of that matter, so I decided to use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard. I have used this tool several times before with no issues until now... This is what happened.
I successfully backed up everything he wanted, and saved it to a 2GB flash drive. After all that, I formatted his hard drive and did a clean install of XP Pro (I did not download any updates). I opened the wizard after Windows installed, and it gave me an error message stating that the version of the wizard I was using to restore the settings is newer than the version I used to make the backup, and it won't let me restore. I installed all the updates from windows updates, and to no avail it still didn't work.
I did some simple googling and found that there is incompatability between the versions on XP Home and XP Pro. I really need to restore these files... Can anyone help me?

Brad L. - MCP

"If the doctors told me I had 5 minutes to live, I would type faster.

 

[wahnula]

Well, a few ways you could go...one would be to re-install XP Home, and restore the data, then back it up conventionally, saving My Documents, save the data from the email client, export Favorites and re-import to a new install of XP Pro.

Another way would be to install XP Home in a Virtual Machine like MS' Virtual PC 2007 (free,

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...02-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

)

Recover via F&STW, then export the data to USB key or a folder on the HDD, then re-import into XP Pro. I haven't done any research on this issue, I will take your word on the incompatibility problems.

Personally, I would choose a third option, do a full install of Home to another HDD (I have a closetful of old spares)and recover, then install the Home drive as a slave or second drive to the existing Pro install, this would save a little time and guarantee that ALL the data would be there by not wiping the drive to install XP Pro. You could then go to the Home drive from the Pro install and recover everything one piece at a time.

Unfortunately some settings will still need to be set manually, but this is not the end of the world. Every time I have used the F&STW I end up with a lot of artifacts from the previous install, I am a believer in starting fresh.

As my mother would say "no good deed goes unpunished"...

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wahnula]

Apparently there was a utility called fastconv.exe that would repair the differences between the versions of FSTW (F.A.S.T) but is unsupported by MS. See this:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/fast.htm

and this:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1262006&page=1

where the fastconv.exe file is discussed. Here's an extortion site that has it:

http://fastconv.org/

and another site that has it for free:

http://sac-ftp.externet.hu/educult12.html

but be sure to run several virus scans on this file before using! It appears to be a command line utility, you may be better off using one of my other solutions.



Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[brokenhalo]

Thanks alot for your help. I have heard of that command-line tool, and it seems to be what I need. My problem is that I don't own a copy of XP Home, so I'm definitely not going to purchase a copy just to restore his files. I will try that utility out and see where it leads me. Thanks alot for the tip, and any more would be greatly appreciated

Brad L. - MCP

"If the doctors told me I had 5 minutes to live, I would type faster.

 

[wahnula]

The key seems to be having the same version of the migwiz.exe file on both machines...but since the drive has been overwritten this is an unknown. Please BACK UP THE MIGWIZ.DAT FILE sorry for shouting but it's your lifeline at the moment.

Since you don't have XP Home, maybe you can try and find out if the data on the HDD is still readable:

http://www.runtime.org

Buying a copy of XP Home would be a cheaper fix, does your friend think that his data is worth $80?

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wahnula]

Come to think of it, a newer version of XP Home might have the exact same problem, a newer and thus incompatible version of migwiz.exe. Keep at the fastconv tack and post back with your progress.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[brokenhalo]

OK, I tried pretty much every possible scenario with fastconv, but to no avail. I read every tutorial and tried everything I could think of... BUT... I did find a copy of XP Home I had lying around (no idea where it came from) and all I did was run FAST from the cd-rom and it worked just like it was supposed to. There seems to be alot of people out there with the same problem that I did with no real answers, so I created and uploaded an .msi file with the older version of FAST.

"If the doctors told me I had 5 minutes to live, I would type faster.

 

[wahnula]

God job brokenhalo! Any way we could get a link to that file for future problems?

Tony

Users helping Users...