Archive: Step-by-step guide to a zero-touch, hardlink OS migration from XP to Windows 7

I promised that I’d post a step-by-step guide on how to create a zero-touch, hardlinking USMT task sequence in SCCM 2007 to help refresh your systems from XP to Windows 7, so here it is. I realize that Windows 8 is the current release, so I will do this same tutorial for a SCCM 2012 …

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Archive: Empty/invalid shortcuts after USMT migration? Use this XML file.

Here’s another great snippet of XML that I like to add to my USMT migrations. By default USMT will migrate desktop and start menu shortcuts. This is great if you have the item installed that the shortcut is pointing to! Often in my migrations, though, the software or file that was references by the shortcut …

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Archive: Migrate Network Printers and Mapped Network Drives in USMT

This is a simple USMT XML file that you can reference in your scanstate/loadstate, because these items aren’t actually migrated in USMT4 any more. To use it, just reference it as an additional XML file in your task sequence in SCCM, or add it to your scanstate/loadstate command (/i:printers.xml) Download Printers.xml

Archive: Hardlinking

XP end-of-life is among us, and I am being booked on several OS deployment projects to get ready for this! One of the most useful features available in MDT and SCCM is hardlinking– the ability to run a USMT scanstate/capture and keep the files local on the actual system being migrated instead of shooting them …

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Archive: Prevent admin membership from being migrated in USMT

On quite a few of the XP-to-Win7 migrations I’ve worked on, the client has also used the opportunity to pull administrator rights from their standard users- a noble cause. If you’re using USMT to migrate systems, though, the administrator group membership will also be migrated. To avoid this, add the following snippet of XML in …

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