Leave it to Microsoft to take what should have been an easy task, call it “easy” and then proceed to make their wizard lead you straight to a mess.
The problem is, that while the “Easy Transfer” wizard claims that you are copying “an account” what you’re really just doing is copying files. That may seem obvious, but get this. If you setup up the new machine, and that machine has 2 users, and you log in as user A assuming that this “account transfer” is “smart” as “wizards” always pretend to be… so you initiate a transfer of user B… Guess what!??!! You will, very stupidly be stuck with a bunch of files copied into user A’s profile. No new user.
**EDIT: Turns out I was the stupid one. I failed to read the sentence on the first wizard page carefully. It clearly states that going to the advanced tab is necessary to accomplish precisely what I wanted… After clearing out 19000+ files from the wrong user profile I have learned to slow down and read. Something I’ve had to tell other users so many times. I can whine that it didn’t have the “sense” to warn me when it discovered gigs of files already existing in the destination account, but that would be too much to ask. CLICK ADVANCED… I REPEAT CLICK ADVANCED…. I’m not sure that I’d hide that setting under advanced, but CLICK IT! …
So take heed of my warning here (which, after you realize the ass you made of yourself by assuming that easy really meant “easy” you’ll discover exists all over the web) … create the user that you are copying. Windows is not planning on doing it for you, despite their claim that you are copying a “user account”. They just do a dumb file copy.
In fact, after reading a few other nightmares be sure, they will be copying junk you don’t want. From what I can tell, even junk you unchecked. It may well be better to skip the “easy transfer” and do things the “hard” way. As for me, this is going to be a big old pain in the butt. I have to figure out how to remove all of these files that are now intermingled with my other user’s files. Thankfully I have fairly current backups. Let’s hope system restore does it… (I’m not holding my breath on that one).
Just added your twitter. I like your older post about backups.
i’ve had the same troubles before i moved to mac. time machine actually works.
i admit that this article is sure a good one, keep up the work.