Windows Migration Assistant stuck looking for source #
The Windows Migration Assistant sounds swell:
Move your data from a Windows PC to a Mac: Use Windows Migration Assistant to transfer your music, pictures, documents, and other data from a Windows PC to your Mac. Windows Migration Assistant transfers your contacts, calendars, email accounts, and more from a PC and puts these files in the appropriate places on your Mac.
Though in practice, it doesn't seem to work so well:
I tried using it to import from Windows 7 64-bit into a new iMac running OS X 10.11.2 via a gigabit Ethernet connection running through a router. On the Mac side, it was stuck at "Looking for source..." while the Windows side was stuck at "Waiting for your Mac to connect..." No antivirus or firewall was running on the Windows machine.
I found that the Bonjour Service was not running and started it. It stopped running a few seconds later. Tried several times, same result.
Reinstalling Bonjour for Windows seemed like the next logical step. Finding it as an independent download on the Apple site proved much harder than it should. Here it is:
That did the trick. The import continued normally, but concluded with:
Sorry
An error occurred while transferring your information.
Some documents for user could not be transferred.
No further information on what failed to transfer was available, so after the iMac setup was complete, I fired up the FTP server (sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist) on the Mac and DeltaWalker on the PC to compare the key user directories (Pictures, Music, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc). There were only a handful of missing files in those directories (which were easily copied over via DeltaWalker), but the Outlook import had failed spectacularly; none of the email had imported into Mail.app, and the email settings were incomplete.
Used PST Converter Pro to convert email, contacts, and calendar items from two PST files totaling over 20GBs - worked perfectly (Mail.app 9.2 is a disaster though - avoid if at all possible).
In future, I won't waste time with Windows Migration Assistant; connecting the old drive via USB 3.0, copying files, and performing any necessary conversions with third-party tools is much faster.
/mac | Dec 20, 2015
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