Windows Easy Transfer is a specialized file transfer program developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...

that allows users of the

Windows Windows is a group of several Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, W ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

to transfer personal files and settings from a computer running an earlier version of Windows to a computer running a newer version. Windows Easy Transfer was introduced in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and is included in

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

, and

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...

. It replaces the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard included with

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and offers limited migration services for computers running

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officially ...

SP4 and Windows XP SP2. For all versions of Windows, it does not transfer applications—only files and settings. Microsoft incorporated a key technology into the Windows Easy Transfer tool based on its acquisition of Apptimum in 2006. Apptimum's technology complemented the transfer experience offered across multiple Windows operating systems, including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Vista and Windows 10. Windows Easy Transfer was discontinued with

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

. From September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2016, Microsoft partnered with

Laplink Laplink (stylized as ''LapLink'') was a proprietary piece of software developed by Mark Eppley and sold by Traveling Software, which is now LapLink Software, Inc. First available in 1983, LapLink was used to synchronize, copy, or move, files be ...

to provide a free download of

PCmover Laplink PCmover is PC migration software developed by Laplink Software. Introduced in 2005, as the successor to Laplink, PCmover comes in a variety of versions that provide the ability to move or restore all selected files, folders, settings, user p ...

Express, which allowed data and settings to be transferred from at least Windows XP to either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

History

For Windows 2000, Microsoft developed the User State Migration Tool command line utility that allowed users of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

- 98 and

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retai ...

to migrate their data and settings to the newer operating system; it did not provide a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

. An additional migration tool, Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (migwiz.exe) was developed for Windows XP to facilitate the migration of data and settings from Windows 98 and

Windows Me Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Win ...

. It could be launched from the Windows XP

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both compute ...

and presented options to transfer data and settings via a 3.5-inch floppy, computer network,

direct cable connection Direct Cable Connection (DCC) is a feature of Microsoft Windows that allows a computer to transfer and share files (or connected printers) with another computer, via a connection using either the serial port, parallel port or the infrared port ...

, or a

zip disk The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250& ...

. Users could also create a ''wizard disk'' to initiate the migration process when run from earlier operating system. A preliminary version of Windows Easy Transfer was demonstrated at the 2004

Windows Hardware Engineering Conference The Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) is a series of technical conferences and workshops, where Microsoft elaborates on its hardware plans for Windows devices. The WinHEC from 1992 to 2008, which stood for Windows Hardware Engineerin ...

Jim Allchin James Edward Allchin (born 1951, Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States) is an American computer scientist, philanthropist and guitarist. He is a former Microsoft executive. He assisted Microsoft in creating many of the system platform component ...

as the successor to the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, scheduled for release in the next client version of Windows, Windows Vista (then codenamed "Longhorn"). As with the final release, this preliminary version could use an optional specialized

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply ( interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

cable to transfer data between computers. After the

release to manufacturing A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

of Windows 7, Microsoft backported the version of Windows Easy Transfer in that operating system to Windows XP and Windows Vista as an optional download to facilitate migration to the new operating system.

Items transferred

Windows Easy Transfer can transfer: * Data files and folders For transferring from Windows versions later than Windows 2000: *

User account A user is a person who utilizes a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username include login name, screenname (or screen name), accoun ...

s and their settings * Windows and application configuration data stored in files or in the

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and u ...

As of Windows 8.1, Easy Transfer can no longer export data to another computer, but can still open files created on an earlier version of Windows. Windows Easy Transfer does not support transferring installed applications. Microsoft planned to release a supplementary ''Windows Easy Transfer Companion'' for transferring certain supported applications from Windows XP to Windows Vista, but it remained as a

perpetual beta Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. Perpetual b ...

during development and a final version was never released.

Transfer methods

Several transfer methods can be used: * An

Easy Transfer Cable Windows Easy Transfer is a specialized file transfer program developed by Microsoft that allows users of the Windows operating system to transfer personal files and settings from a computer running an earlier version of Windows to a computer runn ...

(not supported on

) * A computer network * A

CD recorder In computing, an optical disc drive is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only ...

DVD recorder A DVD recorder is an optical disc recorder that uses optical disc recording technologies to digitally record analog or digital signals onto blank writable DVD media. Such devices are available as either installable drives for computers or ...

and sufficient number of CDs or

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

s * A

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since first ...

or an

external hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magneti ...

. In this mode Windows Easy Transfer saves archive files of files and settings on the source machine to a user-specified location, which does not need to be a USB drive; the destination machine is then given access to the archives.

Restrictions

Windows Easy Transfer does not support migration from a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A comput ...

to a

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...

system. Windows Vista and later versions do not support incoming connections over

IrDA The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) is an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1994 by around 50 companies. IrDA provides specifications for a complete set of protocols for wireless infrared communications, and the name "IrDA" also ...

, serial, or

parallel Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of IB ...

ports, but incoming connections over

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 19 ...

, HPNA, and

wireless LAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

are supported. In Windows 8.1, Windows Easy Transfer can only import settings from Windows 7, Windows 8, and

Windows RT Windows RT is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a version of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 built for the 32-bit ARM architecture (ARMv7). First unveiled in January 2011 at Consumer Electronics Show, the Windows RT 8 oper ...

, but not from Windows Vista or from another Windows 8.1 computer. The only transfer method supported in Windows 8.1 is by a USB flash drive; transfers by an Easy Transfer Cable or a network connection are not supported.

References

{{Windows Components Discontinued Windows components Software features Windows Vista

History

Items transferred

Transfer methods

Restrictions

See also

References