User State Migration

Users invest a lot of time and creative ingenuity in their local desktops. They also put quite a bit of effort into circumventing rules about where to save their files. When the time comes to migrate the user's desktops, the biggest challenge is to preserve their data and settings while implementing the new operating system and any new applications you're deploying at the same time.

Ordinarily, a deployment consists of three stages:

  • Collect the user data and copy it to a server.

  • Wipe the desktop drive and image it with the new operating system (OS).

  • Transfer the user data back to the desktop.

Microsoft provides two tools that simplify the migration considerably:

  • Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (FSTW). This tool consists ...

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