What’s New in the User State Migration Tool?

The Windows® User State Migration Tool (USMT) 4.0 is now part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) 2.0. Like most of the Windows AIK tools, USMT is a scriptable command-line tool and can be customized to your user file migration needs. USMT supports file migration from Windows XP, Windows Vista®, and Windows 7 to the Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems. If you are in the process of deploying Windows Vista now, you can evaluate USMT 4.0 features for migrations to Windows Vista.

As with previous releases, USMT 4.0 includes two primary components, ScanState and LoadState, along with a set of modifiable XML files: MigApp.xml, MigUser.xml, and MigDocs.xml. In addition, you can create custom XML files to support your migration needs. You can also create a Config.xml file to specify files or settings to exclude from the migration.

New Features in USMT 4.0

**Hard-link migration store
**The new hard-link migration store is for use in computer-refresh scenarios only. Hard-link migration stores are stored locally on the computer that is being refreshed and can migrate user accounts, files, and settings in less time using megabytes of disk space instead of gigabytes.

**Ability to run the ScanState command on an offline Windows image
**You can run the ScanState command in Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE). In addition, USMT now supports migrations from previous installations of Windows contained in Windows.old directories. The offline directory can be a Windows directory when you run the ScanState command in Windows PE or Windows.old.

**Volume shadow copy support
**With the /vsc command-line option, the ScanState command can now use the volume shadow copy service to capture files that are locked for editing by other applications.

**New helper functions
**The ScanState command has two new helper functions that enable new migration scenarios. The MigXmlHelper.FileProperties function can be used to control which files migrate, based on properties you specify—for example, date created, date modified, date accessed, and file size. The MigXmlHelper.GenerateDocPatterns function can be used to automatically find user documents on a computer without authoring extensive custom migration .xml files.

**Improved space estimation
**The ScanState command now more accurately estimates the size of the migration store as well as the additional temporary disk space required to create the migration store. This results in a reduction of migration failures due to low disk space. The ScanState command now also estimates the size of the compressed migration store.

**Configurable file errors
**You can use the new <ErrorControl> section in the Config.xml file to configure which file or registry read/write errors can be safely ignored by the /c command-line option and which might cause the migration to fail. In addition, the /genconfig option now generates a sample <ErrorControl> section that is enabled by specifying error codes and desired behaviors in the Config.xml file.

**Local group migration
**You can use the new <ProfileControl> section in the Config.xml file to configure the local group membership of users during the migration. This enables scenarios such as changing users from being members of the local administrators group to being members of the local users group during the migration.

**List of files being migrated
**You can use the /listfiles command-line option for the ScanState command to generate a text file list of all files included in the migration.

**Usmtutils.exe
**This new executable file supplements the functionality in Scanstate.exe and Loadstate.exe.

**New Advanced Encryption Standard encryption options
**USMT 4.0 enables support for stronger encryption algorithms, called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), in several key size options, and based on support in the source computer’s operating system.

USMT is intended for administrators who are performing large-scale automated deployments. If you are only migrating the user states of a few computers, you can use Windows Easy Transfer for computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Check out the online demonstration of USMT 4.0.