I received the January 2008 of Technet magazine this morning and was glancing through it when I discovered this tool. What brought my attention to it was the following incident which occurred about a month or so ago. My buddy Denny called me and he was having trouble transferring info from an XP box over to a new Vista box. We tried a half dozen things but it was no go. What was frustrating is that Denny had used the procedure successfully before using the Easy Transfer wizard software. He ended up doing it the old fashion way. Backup than a restore.

According to Microsoft this transfer can be done over a network or via a USB transfer cable. In addition, the software supports [with some limitations] transferring over some programs as well. You may wish to read the documentation first prior to using the software. On their site Microsoft states:

System requirements

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WETC has the following system requirements:

	You must have the following two physical computers: • The source computer must be running an x86-based version of Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2). • The destination computer must be running an x86-based version of Windows Vista. • Note Both computers must be running the U.S. English version of Windows.
•	At least 200 megabytes (MB) of hard disk space must be available.
•	To use WETC, you must log on as an administrator.

This seems like another tool to include in your tool kit. This tool is still in beta form.

More information and software download can be found here.

Comments welcome.

[tags] microsoft, software, transfer files, companion, beta, [/tags]