Video Transcript

Hi this is Jeff Hicks. Today, I want to give you a quick walk through of using the Windows Easy Transfer tool that ships with Windows 7.' It is also available in Windows Vista and you can download a version for XP. This is a handy tool if you need to move a user to a new computer or say rebuild an existing computer.

I have a user here who is logged on and there is a problem with his computer and I have decided I need to reload it.' Before I can do that, though, I need to make sure I do things like be able to move his Documents, you can see here, the Files that he has and his Desktop and the Icons and all of that. What I am going to do is in the Run Box, type Run Windows Easy Transfer. This has to run as an Administrator, so I am going to do Run as Administrator, you could also Log off and Log on as an admin.' Alright, up comes the Easy Transfer Wizard, we are just going to walk through this.

We can transfer either via a cable, a special USB cable, or over the network.' If the other computer is up and running it does a peer to peer connection.' We're gonna attach an external drive or in my case I am going to use a network share.' This is the old computer. This is going to take a few minutes to scan the existing profiles and all the files that might be copied. I am going to let this run and I will be back in a moment.

It is finished and you can see the accounts that it found.' Now I don't need back up the Administrator account all I want is my RGBiv account I am also going to uncheck shared items.' You can customize, so I do not need his videos or his music. You can come to Advanced you can also further customize, for example, I'm not going to bring over his saved games but I do want to grab this Scripts Directory so I can check that.' It will take a moment to select all those files. I can click Save, go to Next. I can password protect it but I am not going to.' I need to specify the location I am going to put this up on a Network Share and give this a file name Roy.' Alright, the transfer will now take place and again this will take a few minutes. I'll come back in a minute or two when this is complete.

The transfer is complete. So, I can go to Next. It shows me that it is finished. Do Next and go ahead and Close this out. Now, what I need to do is I can shut down the computer, reload it with the operating system, and then have Roy log on once. I'll be back in just a moment.'

OK, so after the reload I have logged on once as Roy to create the profile as you can see none of his Documents are here and his Desktop is blank I am missing the Shortcuts that were on the Desktop. So, now that this is loaded, though, I can Log off Log on as the Administrator and then bring up the Easy Transfer Wizard and start the restore.' So, give me a moment to bring that up and we'll take a look at that.

Now, I am logged back on, as the Domin Admin and I start the Easy Transfer Wizard we're doing the Hard Drive, this is the new computer now. We have already saved the files.' I need to specify the location of the backup file. Roy.MIG . It will open it, now it shows me what do I want to restore. You can customize if I want to maybe not restore everything, but I am going to Restore everything. Click Transfer. Now again, this will take a few minutes. So, we will let this run and I'll be back in just a moment.

After a few minutes the transfer is complete. I can look to see what was transferred and view the report as well as all the files. We are good with that. We are just going to close that out. Now I am going to Log off, Log on as Roy again, and we should see everything back again.' One more quick break and then we will wrap this up.

Finally, here I am logged back on as Roy G Biv.' You can see the Desktop is back the Icons are back the Documents are back, now the Scripts folder is back. Everything is back the way that it needed to be so Roy can get back to work. So the Windows Easy Transfer is a terrific tool to help you move files and settings between computers or even as a place holder while you rebuild a computer.

I hope you found this useful.'' There is a lot more good information in the accompanying article. I hope you'll take a moment to take a look at.' Thank you very much for your time.