Overview and Guidelines –
User State Migration Tool (USMT)
Howard Carter
Senior Consultant
Hcarter@microsoft.com
USMT’s capabilities
Tools
Command line options
How to customize USMT
USMT covers the initial 90%
Customization can handle the last 10%
Features
Captures and restores data
Files and folders
Registry keys
Windows settings
Local user accounts and group memberships
Enterprise-targeted
Uses the same core engine as Windows Easy Transfer, without
the GUI but with additional configuration
Provided as part of the free Windows Automated Installation Kit
Don’t miss the documentation, it’s there…
Handles differences between OSes
Features
Differentiating features
Hardlink migration
If your existing partition structure is going to be kept
Blazingly fast
Offline migration
If the current OS isn’t functional or if you just want to start the process from Windows
PE
Volume shadow copy support
When online and not using hardlinks
Understanding of Windows component configuration
Simplifies the migration of Windows settings
Extra steps may be needed for offline migrations (e.g. printers, network connections)
Watch out for http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2018593 if using ConfigMgr
Features
Built-in support for migrating application settings
Office 2003, 2007
Office 2010 with optional hotfix
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2023591
Several other consumer-oriented applications, but not much else
Opportunity for customization
Automatic identification of data files
Helper function that looks at file associations
Takes care of many types of application data (but not settings)
Scenarios
Refresh
Capture user data from existing OS (ideally with hardlinks)
Wipe old OS (ideally without reformatting or repartitioning)
Install new OS and applications
Restore user data
Replace
Capture user data from existing computer to a network or USB
drive
Dispose of existing computer
Deploy OS to a new computer
Restore user data from network or USB drive
Requirements
Source OS
Windows XP and above
Client OSes only
Target OS
Windows Vista and above
Client OSes only
Platforms
Everything but x64 to x86
Tools
Scanstate
Captures user state
Loadstate
Restores user state
USMTUTILS
Cleanup hardlink state stores
Basic command line options
Always specify a store path and logging
SCANSTATE.EXE C:\StateStore /L:c:\ScanState.log /V:5
LOADSTATE.EXE C:\StateStore /L:c:\LoadState.log /V:5
Specify which migration manifests to use
/i:MigApp.xml /i:MigDocs.xml
/i:MigApp.xml /i:MigUser.xml
Don’t use MigDocs.xml and MigUser.xml together
MigDocs.xml is preferred to avoid needing to create custom XML files to migrate additional document
types
Specify migration manifests on both Scanstate and Loadstate to ensure proper behavior
/O to overwrite an existing store, if already present
/hardlink /nocompress /efs:hardlink to use hardlinks
/offline /offlinewindir:c:\windows or /offline /offlinewinold:c:\windows.old for offline migrations
/localonly to ignore USB drives, network drives
Command line options for users
Include and exclude users
/UI:DOMAIN\User to explicitly include
/UE:DOMAIN\User to explicitly exclude
/UEL:90 to specify only user profiles modified in 90 days
/ALL (default) to include all users
Watch out for unexpected results from combinations of parameters:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2009/11/30/understanding-usmt-4-0-behavior-with-ueland-ue.aspx
Create users in new OS
/LAC or /LAC:password to create new accounts
/LAE to enable the newly-created accounts
If /LAC isn’t specified, USMT will fail when attempting to restore the account
Change domain or user name
/MD:OldDomain:NewDomain to specify different domain
/MU:OldDomain\OldUser:NewDomain\NewUser to specify different user
Using Config.xml
The Config.xml file serves multiple purposes
Controls how to handle errors
Specifies which components should or shouldn’t be migrated
Controls how local group memberships are migrated
It’s an optional file, but is recommended
Generate a starting point using /genconfig:MyConfig.xml and
include all the migration manifests
Turn off components you don’t want to migrate
migrate=“no”
Make additional customizations
Error control, profile control, etc.
Command line options with MDT and ConfigMgr
Set task sequence variables with options to add
OSDMigrateAdditionalCaptureOptions, OSDMigrateAdditionalRestoreOptions (ConfigMgr)
ScanStateArgs, LoadStateArgs (Lite Touch)
Don’t duplicate options provided by default
Don’t add logging parameters
Use the provided mechanism for adding deployment manifests
OSDMigrateConfigFiles (ConfigMgr), USMTMigFiles (Lite Touch)
USMTConfigFile (Lite Touch)
Watch out for conflicting options
Specify “Customize how user profiles are captured” with ConfigMgr to get rid of “/all”
Some options might not be possible (e.g. changing encryption)
Make sure you specify appropriate paths to files
USMT won’t go looking for them outside of the current working directory
Creating custom manifests
From simple through complex
Unconditional exclude
Migrating files, folders and registry keys
Adding detection rules
Run commands and scripts
Helper functions
GenerateDrivePatterns
GenerateDocPatterns
StartService, StopService, RegisterFonts, KillExplorer, RestartExplorer
<migration
urlid="http://www.microsoft.com/migration/1.0/migxmlext/filemig">
<component type="Application" context="System">
<displayName>File Migration Test</displayName>
<role role="Data">
<rules context="System">
<include>
<objectSet>
<pattern type="File">C:\Demo1\* [filename.txt]</pattern>
<pattern type="File">C:\Demo2\* [*]</pattern>
</objectSet>
</include>
</rules>
</role>
</component>
</migration>
Troubleshooting common issues
USMT doesn’t support Office 2010
Make sure you install the update
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2011/02/02/usmt-4-0-support-for-office2010.aspx
Bad user profiles can cause issues (delays, failures)
Clean them up or tell USMT to ignore them with MIG_IGNORE_PROFILE_MISSING=1
http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2010/03/28/usmt-failures-due-to-badprofile-list-entries.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2011/04/14/usmt-pauses-at-quot-starting-themigration-process-quot-for-many-minutes-then-works.aspx
OS settings don’t migrate with ConfigMgr
We talked about that one, MDT fixes it but you might need a fix for the fix, see Office 2010
link above
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2018593
Troubleshooting common issues
Printers, drive mappings, etc. don’t migrate offline
USMT migrates user data from removable drives even with
/localonly
It migrates USB disks even with /localonly, use an unconditional exclude
http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2009/04/29/excludingusb-firewire-and-other-drives-from-usmt-capture.aspx
Shortcuts to files on network drives don’t migrate
Known issue, you can modify MigUser.xml to remove section with
IgnoreIrrelevantLinks (but then all links are retained, even invalid ones)
USMT fails with some half-hour timezones
Install the USMT update for Office 2010, it fixes this too
Speaker Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/
Email: Hcarter@microsoft.com
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