Laplink PCmover Puts Law Firms on the Road to Windows 7

Law.com  - Sean Doherty
Apr 20, 2010
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There are plenty of reasons  to upgrade to Microsoft's new OS when you purchase new PCs for the law firm. But migrating user desktops to the new systems can be frustrating for both administrators and users. Luckily, there are tools on the market like Avocent LANDesk, Kace KBOX, and Laplink PCmover that will help your law firm move from Windows XP to 7 with their user settings, files, and applications.

The tools to move user programs, data files, and registry settings from old PCs to a new ones can be a blessing for administrators, as well as a curse. Just like moving your business or home furnishings, there are some things that you may not want to move, such as applications no longer supported under Windows 7 and their program settings.

I tried out Laplink PCmover version 5, Enterprise edition, and its Policy Manager to configure data migration from one PC to another. Although PCmover is not an imaging tool like KBOX or LANDesk, the policy manager allowed me to script the migration process, i.e., file transfer, down to granular details that could include user intervention, or not.

POLICY FORMATION

My Lenovo ThinkPad X24 (Intel Pentium III 1.13 GHz, 640 MB RAM) was well past its five-year depreciation under the IRS General Depreciation System. But its in-place upgrade to Windows 7 was dubious since it lacked Microsoft's recommended one gigabyte of RAM for optimal performance and its graphics adapter did not support the Windows Aero user interface.

To make an upgrade more appealing, I contacted Lenovo and they loaned me a ThinkPad T410 (Intel Core i5, Dual 2.53 GHz, 4 GB RAM) running Windows 7. The T410 gave me the impetus I needed to get started. I installed PCmover Enterprise on an HP ML350 Proliant Server (Intel Xeon E5520, 2.27 GHz, 6144 MB RAM) running Windows Server 2003 R2 with the required .NET Framework 2.0. Note that Windows XP can also host PCmover Enterprise.

The Enterprise Policy Manager, PCmover client software, and Microsoft Redistributable files for both 2005 and 2008 installed to the server, along with a "Startup This" application -- all in approximately 82 megabytes of disk space. The client software requires Microsoft Redistributable files to run. The "Startup This" program installs on the new PC to enable the user to see what programs started on the old PC on boot and provides the option to also start them when the new PC started. I shared the directory containing the client files so all users could see and run the PCmover program over the network.

When I started the Policy Manager on the ML350, the program asked me: "Do you want to run the 'Define New Migration Wizard' to assist in creating a session policy file for a pair of computers?" The right answer was "no" because I first needed to set up migration policies before I detailed pairs of old and new computers to upgrade.

The Policy Manager is comprised of windows that match the same windows displayed to end users when they run the PCmover program. This made it very easy to configure policies for user moving days.

One master policy applies to all migrations. Session policies are secondary rules that can apply to a subset of all migrations, e.g., a user or computer group in a Windows Domain or specific computers identified in a work group. I first set up a master policy applicable to allow migrations from the network with settings applicable to all the PCs in my environment. Then, I used session policies to restrict migrations based on computer pairings of old and new, e.g., the ThinkPad X24 and ThinkPad T410.

The tabs in the left-hand side of the screen were clickable and brought a window of information into context. For example, the "Commands" tab provides a window to restrict which PCmover commands run on client computers. I restricted the T410 computer to take a snapshot of its system, to receive files from the X24, and to undo the migration, if necessary. I restricted the X24 to "send" its data to the T410. This is a page that does not display in the user migration, as you can see from the lower right-hand corner of Figure 1.

I required the PCmover program to use policy files over the network when migrating from old to new PCs -- not via other Laplink supported methods, namely: USB cable, file storage device, Laplink Ethernet cable (cross-over cable), or Windows Upgrade Assistant. I also set migration modifications in the master policy file to always move users' wallpaper and screen saver, Word settings, and Internet Explorer settings, and to use Startup This.

For "Migration Items," I allowed users to interact with the program and choose what to migrate: applications, files, and/or settings. The PCmover program displayed pages to users when I selected the check box at the top of the screen in Figures 1. Note that the image users see is previewed in Policy Manager in the lower right-hand corner of the page.

I also filtered files that I did not want to move from old PCs to new PCs in the master policy. In Figure 3, below, I excluded temporary and backup files by their extension (.tmp and .bak), as well as movie files. The nice thing about this page is that I could allow users to interact with the page and add their own filters but users could not remove the filters that I had preset.

RUNNING PCMOVER

Once my master and session policy were set, I turned to the T410 and ran PCmover from the shared directory on the server. My "Welcome! ALM user" screen appeared to start the migration process and scan the new computer to prepare it. The scan insures that the information or applications from the old computer do not overwrite data on the new computer. After the scan completed, PCmover waited on the new computer for the old computer to contact it with the upgrade information contained in a file, or files, aptly called a moving van. From the ThinkPad X24, I ran PCmover from the shared directory. Since I paired the X24 with the T410 in the Policy Manager, the X24 knew enough to load the T410's snap shot. Then, the wizard asked me to choose migration items: applications, files, and/or settings.

Next, I selected the user accounts to migrate from the list of users provided. The list was exhaustive and included Administrator and Guest, as well as sdoherty. Note that there was a box to unclick that expanded the user view to see all users on the old PC. This page would probably be horrifying to most users, so it would be a good candidate to fully script and remove from their view. I then selected the drive letters (c:\) to migrate from the old to the new PC. This option drilled down into the file system to select, or deselect, folders that I did not want to migrate. By default, "My Documents" and all folders and files associated with specific applications are migrated to the new PC.

PCmover recognized 23 applications to move, including Adobe Reader 9.31, DYMO Label, HP Officejet 8500, HP Scanjet 7000, Java 2 Runtime, Microsoft Office Professional 2007, and Outlook Connector. It did not recognize Sun Microsystems ODF Add-in to Office or other applications that resided on the file system but only ran from the command line, like Filezilla. All told, PCmover loaded up 5,989 megabytes of data into the moving van that included 21,067 files and 74,394 settings. After the transfer was complete and installed on the new computer, I logged in using my old user name and password to find my Bliss wallpaper, as well as my MSN homepage.

Office detected new hardware and asked me for my 25-character product key. So remember to deactivate Office and any other applications wed to a license key on the old PC. Once the product key was entered, Office ran with all my settings, but the ODF Add-in was not effective. I had to reinstall that Add-in, along with the tools and drivers associated with my printer and scanner. The applications that made direct use of the peripherals, however, worked with the new drivers, without more. For example, the Newsoft Presto! Bizcards software worked just fine, once the new scanner drivers were properly installed.

Although I was very happy to be operating on the ThinkPad T410, I also tested out Laplink's facility to undo the migration. I am happy to report that Laplink can go in reverse faster than it can go forward -- a good thing when you need to get out of a jam. An hour-long migration was restored in less than 15 minutes. So if you have any very dissatisfied users, they will be happy to return to their usual course in minutes.

CONCLUSION

PCmover migrated my applications, files, and settings to a new PC running Windows 7 without the pain of manually moving files, reinstalling applications, and reconfiguring settings -- all of which would take me a day if I dedicated my time to it. Although it was very easy to configure and use, PCmover's reporting features were limited to .csv files and were not directly viewable from the Policy Manager. Also, PCmover will not support image-based migrations until it rolls out Image Assistant later this year.