Migration Assistant Hangs at End?

I had this problem migrating from a unibody Macbook 2008 OS10.6.8 to a new Air. I tried wifi and ethernet and each time migration assistant stalled at half way through. I talk to a third tier tech support. It was the virus barrier program that was the problem On the Air I reinstalled Lion from the recovery partition, created a new user account and deleted the original user account (to erase the partially transferred data that took up SSD space. On the Macbook I uninstalled virus barrier using the intego uninstaller and restarted. Ran migration assistant again and it seems to be working ok and much faster.

I had the problem 3 hours ago migrating from one MacBook Pro to another both currently with the up to date Lion OS and that's how I found myself here. It all went belly up. However, after I shut both machines down I decided to start the process again but this time instead of migrating everything I just highlighted the folders and the user info skipping the application option. I successfully transferred, in a matter of minutes.

I then restarted both machines to see the new settings take hold. I started the migration assistant again and this time only highlighting the Applications option. This took far less time than I expected. Completely finishing in minutes instead of hours.

My experience here has underlined most of my problems with Apple that is that there's not always a clear way of doing something. It's like going into a petrol station with a diesal car and being faced with pumps without colour coding or labelling. You'll know it'll work as others have succeeded but it takes a bit of trial and error to get it right. If you get my drift

As new Mac user, I had similar problems going from pc to MBA. After checking on line and finding a seemingly large number of such problems, I called support (twice) and finally was advised that there are known issues with Migration Assisant - and not just restricted to the windows to Mac transfers.

I was advised that the most stable migration happens when the two machines are connected by ethernet cable directly - not through a router.

That worked for me fine.

Except that in my situation (Win 7 to Lion on a new MBA - so no OS upgrade done), the music, photos and documents did not get deposited to those locations in finder, but were stored in a shared folder under transfered files. Took a while for this newbie Mac user to track them down.

I am having the same problem with my new MBAir too.

I am trying to migrate from vista business to MB air via the same wireless network. but the migration assistant hangs.

😠

Migration assistant used to work like a charm for me, I used it for a couple dozen computers at work over the years; since Lion it has just failed. The technique I use now is to migrate after initial setup (which forces me to create an unnecessary user account). After initial setup, I turn off wireless on both computers and connect them via an ethernet cable. Then I launch migration assistant on each computer and the transfer works well. You may be able to do it during initial setup by telling the setup assistant the computer connects to networks via ethernet. Once I choose a wireless network it is hopeless, migration assistant won't allow non-wireless transfers even if you try to change the settings. Not sure what to recommend for Air users.

If you just transfer one or more user accounts and data but no system settings, this problem does not seem to happen. I had the exact same problem, which seems to be only an issue in Lion.

I used the recovery partition to boot, wiped my main partition, then told the system to reinstall Lion. I then had to wait over an hour for the Lion OS to download and install, then another almost 3 hours for 300gb of data from my external FireWire drive Time Machine backup. When starting a cleanly installed system, I selected restore backup from Time machine but did not try to backup apps or settings, just users and user data. (I restored the apps later using Time Machine and did the setting changes manually, such as adding the wireless network and setting my Energy Saver preferences.)

The first two times I tried this my machine wouldn't even boot properly and I had to wipe it and start again. Obviously there is a major BUG in the Migration Assistant in Lion.I hope someone at Apple is monitoring these discussion groups and this BUG is already in Apple's bug tracking system. Not only is this a major bug, but Apple obviously did not put in any defensive code to handle this situation, Migration Assistant should have an elegant way of resuming or completing an interrupted migration when a problem like this happens.

Meanwhile, the best work-around I can suggest is to turn off transferring settings.

We had the problem migrating from Snow Leopard to a new 13 inch MacBook. Our solution turned out to be the following:

1) Go ahead and go through the intro and setup the disk

2) Run Disk Utility on the source disk

3) Repair the source disk

4) Run Migration Assistant again from Applications\Utilities

After that the Migration Assistant worked without any more problems, but running MA piecemeal created a profile that we later deleted.

We discovered this solution when trying to mount the old disk (in Disk Utility) so we could copy files from it.

Hope this helps someone.

Here is a slightly different spin/approach.

I uncovered this thread when I was having trouble with Migration Assistant, tried the remedies discussed in the threads, etc

Here is my situation and solution.

I had a failed hard disk (Running Lion 10.7.2) so I put in a new disk, with the OS installed, etc. Hooked up my external Time machine drive and no matter what option I chose with Migration Assistant, it would hang, always with "1 minute left"

I finally read the Time Machine instructions (yep) and I just used the restore from Time Machine. I had t go back a few versions as I suspect when my disk was failing it was writing bad information (no alerts or warnings on that but it does tell you right away that you can't restore from a given date/time) but that did the trick. I am back up and running again.

Thought it might be a help in the future

Good morning,

After trying migration assistant via firewire to thunderbolt twice (old machine in target mode), then trying to migrate from the time machine drive, then trying via network instead of target mode disk.....all failed.

This morning Apple told me to turn file vault off first and try again. I'll let ya know if it works......if it does why doesn't migration assistant tell people to turn filevault off first?

Hello Everyone,

I have faced the same problem just recently when I tried to migrate my old MB to a new MBP.

The MA Mac-to-Mac struck every time almost the same position, no matter what I have selected as files to transfer and via wireless or ethernet.

The solution was, as Apple Care suggested, not to migrate Mac-to-Mac but if possible migrate backup-to-Mac. It absolutely worked pretty fast using MA and ethernet. Alternatively, try, on Lion, to use Recovery Partition by pressing Cmd+R when restarting the computer and restore your data from backup. It restores your entire original backup on your HDD whilst MA transfers somewhat less data (not sure exactly what the difference is).

Anyway, good luck!

Good evening,

Tried that after tech support suggested it. No good. Tried from main drive via firewire 800 to thunderbolt, then again, then from Time Machine, then over network, then after turning file vault off...then gave up and moved everything manually and re-installed all the apps.

Good luck,

Ryan

I've had the same problem and I've spent several days trying to find a solution. No help whatsover from Apple, even though they appratently created a bug in the Lion migration assistant and it's their responsbility to fix it and provice information about a solution. I'm ****** about the amount of time I've wasted and the absence of any reliable information from Apple about a solution.

I was going to buy a new iMac but I'm finished spending money on Apple products. They've become a clone of Microsoft.

kinda solved it,

Create a new user

Run migration assistant with your newly created useraccount

When it hangs press:

CMD - Option - Shift - Esc for about 3sec.

restart

done

there is only two side problems:

it will remove your original account, so you have to recreate that one.

second of all, "THIS IS NOT THE WAY IT SHOULD BE".

This is B.S.! Apple, really? You've had this many complaints and no remedy. I too am having the same issues. Mines hanging at 5 minnutes to go.

The less than 1 minute definitly took longer but in the time it took me to find this post it completed for me.