Windows 7 User State Migration Tool
By Patrick Nelson
Microsoft’s User State Migration Tool (USMT) is a
scriptable command-line tool for
Windows 7 user state
migrations.
It’s similar to Windows Easy Transfer, except more
automated.
Easy Transfer is geared towards migrating the user states of
just a few computers, whereas USMT is for large-scale
migrations.
USMT is not recommended by Microsoft for migrations that
need end-user involvement or any machine-by-machine
customization.
USMT migrates user accounts, operating system and
application settings to Windows 7.
It preserves the user state over the upgrade reducing
end-user downtime, so consequently lowers costs.
Users do not have to customize their desktops, or find
missing files. This improves the end-user’s experience with
the upgrade too.
USMT has two principal elements—ScanState and LoadState.
There are also a set of modifiable .xml files, plus you can
create your own .xml files.
The ScanState tool scans the source computer. It collects
the files and settings and creates a store.
LoadState migrates the files and settings using compression
to a temporary location on the Windows 7 destination
machine. It then decompresses the material and puts the file
in the correct location.
The compression can be turned off for testing but it does
help with bandwidth usage.
A config.xml file can be used to specify Windows 7
components to exclude.
Manifest files control what and how operating system and
Internet Explorer settings are migrated to Windows 7.
As with all operating system upgrades, planning is crucial.
Before deploying USMT, IT needs to decide what to migrate
and identify redundancy.
Microsoft TechNet has a Windows 7 migration planning guide
for USMT which you can read
here.
It covers choosing a store type, testing and best practices,
amongst other things.
The latest version is USMT 4.0.
Changes from 3.0 include improved space estimates for the
data; a hard-link migration store for
computer-refresh—hard-link stores are stored locally
improving space requirements; and offline data gathering
with ScanState.
Domain controller access is no longer needed. There is now
integration with Microsoft System Center Configuration
Manager (SCCM) and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT.)
Error control is a new section in the Config.xml file—it
allows you to configure which errors to ignore.
There are new helper functions; volume shadow copy support;
and local group migration is added.
There’s a new listfiles command and there are new encryption
options using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES,) a stronger
algorithm than in USMT 3.0.
Both LoadState and ScanState have new and changed
command-line options in USMT 4.0.
Tip:
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