The only safe way to use F.A.S.T. today is to make a Wizard Floppy or USB Thumb Drive Disk (See ?What is new in SP2?) from the new computer with the above latest version installed.
A reader of this article named Ray suggested the following to determine which version of F.A.S.T. you are using: Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\usmt\, right click on the file migwiz.exe, and select Properties.
Ray also brought up an issue that I have not myself seen, and a solution which is worth mentioning. If you encounter a problem with the F.A.S.T. Wizard hanging permanently at the very end of the transfer, just open the Task Manager and restart your PC. In Ray?s experience, you will find that the transfer is 100% complete; the only thing hanging was the notification that it was finished. With the restart, F.A.S.T. will pick up with no issues.
F.A.S.T. will pack up and save your files and settings for transfer to a new computer. The neat thing is that even when one is upgrading to XP (rather than doing a clean install), you can use this as a ?safety net? in case the upgrade does not go well. Of course, an upgrade is not supposed to lose or change any of your files or settings, but one never knows what might happen ? so you are doing the right thing by thinking ahead about backups. If you run F.A.S.T. and the upgrade installation fails for some reason, you can go back and clean install Windows XP, then import the saved files and settings.
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This wizard can be run on your old system from the Windows XP CD-ROM, and will pack up and save your files and settings for transfer to a new computer. The neat thing is even that when one is upgrading to XP (rather than doing a clean install), you can use this as a ?safety net? in case the upgrade does not go well. Of course an upgrade is not supposed to lose or change any of your files or settings, but one never knows what might happen ? so you are doing the right thing by thinking ahead about backups. If you run F.A.S.T. and the upgrade installation fails for some reason, you can go back and clean install Windows XP, then import the saved files and settings.
Of course, when you use F.A.S.T. while upgrading or clean installing on the same computer, be sure to store the export file created by F.A.S.T. in a safe place so it does not come up missing when you need it. At the point when the wizard asks you ?Select a transfer method,? pick
1. ?Floppy Drive or other removable media? and burn it on a CD (F.A.S.T. can span multiple CDs on most burners);
2. ?Other? and save the file to another partition or drive on the computer on which you are running F.A.S.T. (not the C: drive!); or
3. Best of all, if you have a network set up with drive space available on another computer, use the ?Other? option and save the F.A.S.T. data file across your network to a hard drive on another computer. NOTE: To extend this concept just a little, one also can use F.A.S.T. as a backup utility. It stores most everything that is unique or has been added to the initial install of Windows XP. If you have a recent F.A.S.T. export file on hand, you can do a clean install of Win XP on your system after a major crash, reinstall the major applications you use, then import all your settings, account information, and all files that you have added. This is possibly not as fancy as some backup utilities, and it does grab everything and that means a lot of potential fluff ? so it will be a big file. But it does work, and it has twice in my experience been used to get people I work with back up and running with all their needed information intact.
The latest version of the F.A.S.T. Wizard is available in a link from KB article KB896344. It will update your version number to the latest which is version 5.1.2600.2665. You can also download this directly from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6C2F2318-CBDB-47C0-B7C2-77C4CC37A450&displaylang=en
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If you use F.A.S.T. to backup your OE Identity, and then plan to restore that to your existing system, you must delete or rename the OE store folder before restoring with F.A.S.T. (See ?How OE stores files on your hard disk.?) If you don?t, F.A.S.T. will dutifully restore all of your OE mail and news folders into the existing files, resulting in each and every message in each and every folder being duplicated. There is no way to remove the duplicates automatically unless you use a third party tool like DBXtend:
http://www.oehelp.com/DBXtend/Default.aspx
. (Tip from MS-MVP and Tomsterdam webmaster Tom Koch.)
How to Get to the F.A.S.T. Wizard on the Windows XP CD-ROM
Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM and allow it to bring up its Welcome Screen. You will see this screen:
Select ?Perform additional tasks.? You will see this second screen.
Select ?Transfer files and settings.
How to Get to the F.A.S.T. Wizard From Within Windows XP
On the Start menu, click Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Files and Settings Transfer Wizard.
How to Collect Data From Your Existing Install
Click on Next.
Since you are collecting data, select ?Old Computer.?
You will then see the dreaded Microsoft ?Please wait? screen. Even if you have the fastest computer around, you will see this ?wait? screen for at least a little while
Next up is to select how and where to save the data:
?Direct Cable? means via serial port, which will be very, very slow. Use this at the risk of many very frustrating hours of waiting, since F.A.S.T. data (.dat) files can be very large.
More here:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/fast.htm
Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.
If this information is useful, please mark as helpful. Thanks.
