Hi,
I've just installed a shiny new iMac for the parental units, and was hoping to use the Migration Assistant utility (see this link: OS X Lion: About Windows Migration Assistant ) to bring across mail, contacts, photos, bookmarks etc. from the old clunker XP machine. However, I'm getting stuck on the Windows box, where it just sits on 'waiting for your Mac to connect', but never connects. I've tried a few obvious things, such as turning off the firewall on both machines, using a direct ethernet connection to bypass the router, etc., but nothing seems to work.

I've seen a few threads on the Apple Support site with similar issues - all unresolved - but I was wondering if anyone here had managed to get it working.

cheers.

Yep, been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Sometimes it'll hook up just fine. Other times, it seems to go forever without connecting.

Sometimes when it fails, reboot both machines and try again will work fine. Sometimes I give up and use a Belkin USB transfer cable (came with software) to do the job instead.

I haven't decided which I prefer yet.

Migration Assistant, when it works, does a really nice job of extracting data from all sorts of Win programs and importing to Mac. It also messes with user profiles (sets up a new one to match the Windows profile details). I'm finding many switchers have Windows boxes with very generic usernames that I'd like to get rid of in the switch process.

The Belkin software does a really nice job of importing directly into the current user profile so you get to change from generic usernames without any hassle but it sometimes has issues with email programs and address books.

David

Thanks for your reply David.

Did you notice anything in common when it failed (or worked)? Anything in particular I should check on either the Windows machine or the iMac? Services? Network protocols? Firewalls? Sharing?

I might consider the Belkin cable method, although (1) I resent paying for something that I'll only use once, and (2) I'll resent it even more if it doesn't bring mail and contacts across.

Y, I did for a friend who swapped to Mac, from xp. We had no problems, just connected an Ethernet cable and the computers instantly recadnized each other.

Hi Snark

So far I haven't noted any common reasons for fail/success. But then, I'm doing this commercially and I have other options open to me. If it doesn't work I don't stuff around trying to get it to work, just move on to a different process.

As a general rule, it can be worth disabling firewalls and AV software on a Windows computer before starting - at least, in a commercial setting where you don't know what the owner of the computer has configured and it'd take more time to figure out than is worth it.

David

I ended up migrating manually. The hardest part was networking the computers.
Mail and contacts from Thunderbird were easy. Photos from Picasa were also easy but took ages, mainly do to quantity (17 GB). It's nice that iPhoto moves each Picasa folder into a separate event.