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User profile for user: Christian Swanson
Christian Swanson Author
User level: Level 1
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XP SP3 Never Responds to Migration Assistant Authentication Request

I've been using Macs for years and years and PCs for years and years before that. My parents have hung onto their XP machines as long as they (and I) could stand and it's now time to move them over to Mac. I remember the very painful days I spent migrating my Windows Outlook email and address book over to the Mac and swore I'd never go through that again. So when I heard Lion would have a Windows Migration Assistant that works with Outlook, I was nearly ecstatic. That was some days ago now and I now wish I'd just done the migration the old painful way because I'd be done by now.


I have two systems running Lion, one brand new Mini that came pre-installed with Lion and one brand new 17" MBP that came loaded with Snow Leopard but was immediately upgraded to Lion using the App store. I also have two Dell desktops running XP Pro SP3 that's fully up to date with Windows Update. I have exactly the same experience with Migration Assistant on both pairs of machines:

  1. I download and installed Migration Assistant for Windows
  2. I connect the Mac and the PC via an Ethernet cable
    • Both computers acknowledge that there's ethernet present.
    • The Mac can actually browse the XP machine's hard drive.
  3. I run Migration Assistant on the Mac and take it up to the point that it's looking on the network for a computer to connect to.
  4. I run Migration Assistant on the XP machine
  5. The Mac now sees the XP machine in Migration Assistant
  6. I select the XP machine and continue to the authentication step
  7. The Mac spits out an authentication code
  8. The XP machine appears to be waiting to hear from the Mac
  9. Everybody waits for everyone else
  10. Two hours go by
  11. Nothing ever happens.


So, I tried a few things:

  • I rebooted everybody and that changed nothing.
  • I tried it over and over for two days and that changed nothing.
  • I tried reversing the order of steps 3 & 4 above, no difference in the outcome.
  • I tried connecting the two computers via USB, but they never saw each other.
  • I called Apple tech support. The first guy reviewed the steps with me and suggested very nicely that I call Microsoft (LOL). I asked him to escalate the case and he sent me to someone else who did actually seem to know what he was talking about. That person said I should give the XP machine up to 20 minutes to notice the authentication request from the Mac. That's why step 10 is in there above.


So if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Posted on Jul 25, 2011 1:49 PM

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67 replies
User profile for user: Leoiki
Leoiki
User level: Level 1
0 points

Nov 6, 2011 8:37 PM in response to Leoiki

Follow up:

Bottom Line: I ended up transferring manually. See bottom of thread for details.

I could never get the pc and iMac to handshake via Windows Migration Assistant (www.apple.com/migrate-to-mac/) with Lion Migration Assistant.


I was running XP Pro SP3 on a Compaq EVO D510 SFF. Bonjour 2.0.5.0. Apple Software Update not working (entry point issues), but it was working a few months ago. What I tried: Windows firewall off, Windows Auto Update off, booting into Safemode with Networking (via F8). The Compaq was connected via standard Ethernet cable to the new iMac running Lion 10.7.2. Same result: never responds to each other, so I quit both Migration Assistants and kept the two connected via Ethernet cable. I didn't worry about BitDefender Internet Security 2010 and did not attempt to uninstall (there was no way to disable gracefully).


To transfer files: logged on the pc as admin user, then created a folder which I named Shared Documents in the Documents & Settings > All Users. I set the Shared Directory folder permissions to share full rights with Everyone (temporarily for this transfer). I only had one, non-admin user data to transfer. The pc had one directory with all documents, so this was easy. On the pc, I was running Safari for Windows, which I imported all Internet Explorer bookmarks. I was able to find the Safari bookmarks in the Programs & Settings. The user was accustomed to Gmail IMAP, and so I did not have to deal with MS Outlook. I moved documents and Safari bookmarks to the new Shared Documents folder. On the pc, I check the Properties of My Computer and noted the Full Computer name (and I ignored the period that seemed to be appended to the Full computer name).


On the iMac logged in as an admin user, I went to the Finder > Connect to Server > and typed in

smb://PCFULLCOMPUTERNAME.local

where PCFULLCOMPUTERNAME is the Full computer name on the pc. I would type the Full computer name as case sensitive, but I'm not sure it matters. I was asked by the pc to authenticate as a registered user or as a guest. I chose guest.


On the iMac I saw two pc directories, one for the admin user that was logged into the pc (and that directory was empty). The other directory was the Shared Documents I had created earlier. On the iMac, I moved the entire Shared Directory from the connected pc to Users > standard user > Documents of the standard user on the iMac. The standard user's Documents folder had a read minus sign (badge), but I moved the pc folder in there anyways. I logged in as the standard user on the iMac (via fast user switching) went to my documents folder and saw the folder I just moved, although did not have permissions to open it. I clicked on the folder and did a Get Info. Under the Sharing and Permissions, I attempted to Edit the permissions. I had to authenticate with the iMac admin username and password. There was an option to make the standard user (me) to be the owner, so I did it. I went back and selected the folder permission to be inherited by all the enclosed items in the folder, so I did it.


It was a little more work to get all the Safari bookmarks to import and then populate the bookmarks bar, etc.

I hope this summary helps. I'm no expert, and there are lots of threads out there on how to migrate documents to Lion from a pc. "Your mileage may vary." This is what worked for me.

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User profile for user: NotUncleAl
NotUncleAl
User level: Level 1
24 points

Nov 8, 2011 2:22 PM in response to NotUncleAl

Thanks to all who replied with ideas and workarounds to the Migration Assistant failure to connect to Windows XP. Just wanted to post what worked for me.


  • Used shared drives under Windows workgroup -- entire directory trees can be copied easily using Finder.
  • Bookmarks, exported from Firefox to HTML, imported easily into Safari.
  • Outlook calendar: Right-click and email to yourself. Creates an .ics file that imports into iCal. NOTE: apparently not all versions of Outlook support Send Email. (2007 Outlook purchased stand-alone did not, but 2007 Outlook purchased with Office does, go figure).
  • Outlook contacts: export as .csv import into Address Book. (I had to do a lot of cleanup to get consistency in field usage).
  • Mail - wasn't as easy.


One person had 8 years of history in offline folders (nearly 2GB in all, over 3000 messages). Using IMAP or Google to upload thousands of messages might have worked, but 2GB? Thunderbird choked and crashed on the massive PST file, (even after compaction). Outlook2Mac (now O2M) sounded good, but the WEB site is under construction and I couldn't get a download. There is another product called MessageSave (techhit.com) that is intended to archive email and has the capaibility to export into a format that can be read by Mac Mail. Right now, they are offering a 40% discount if you intend to use it only to export from Outlook to Mac: (I hope this is okay to post)


http://www.techhit.com/outlook/export_import_outlook_to_entourage_apple_mac_mail .html


$29 after the discount. Free download will only export 50 messages. It also claims to be able to export calendar and contacts (which I haven't tried).


Kaspersky Password Manager for windows required a java-script to convert it's export into .csv. I choose 1Password because it works very much like Kaspersky. (You can download a 30-day trial from their WEB site, and buy a 5 user family license for $69 from their WEB site). It integrates into Firefox and Safari through Addons. I tried Wallet but was broken and didn't work with Safari (and isn't advertised to work with Firefox).


Remote Desktop downloaded from Microsoft crashed our XP server about every other time we connected. (Blue screen of death! I kid you not!) I deleted that and installed CoRD instead (also free) and haven't had a problem since. Hmmm.


My understanding is that Apple's versions of the Office suite are far better and cheaper than buying Office for the Mac. But we were worried about 100% compatibility with clients so we wound up buying Microsoft Office for the Mac. (Based on the Remote Desktop experience, I'm now more than a little concerned). Office for the Mac comes with Outlook which I quickly disabled after installation. (Half the point of switching to the Mac was so we could use iCloud, to sync with iPhones and Macbooks. The other half is the hope that I'll never have to do a full re-install of all of our software again, as was required to upgrade to Windows 7. So, adios Windows!)


All in all, it hasn't be as easy as using the advertised Windows Migration Assistant might have been, and I'm deeply disappointed that my first exprience with the Mac was non-functioning software from Apple. But I will say that, having developed applications for Windows, Microsoft changes things under the hood with reckless abandon and zero concern that they'll break 3rd party software. I think we're going to be very happy once we're done.

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User profile for user: watts300
watts300
User level: Level 1
36 points

Nov 12, 2011 5:12 AM in response to daveyw

daveyw wrote:


Same problem - not impressed - brand new convert from pc - so, £4000 for a laptop that I can't use.


Am I really going to have to spend 2/3/4 days doing this manually myself.


Not what I expected. Not want I wanted. Not what I paid for.



Different computer, differnent O/S, same old story.


Wow that's the most overly dramatic post I think I've ever read. If you think you can't use a particular computer because your Windows computer is preventing the transfer of your data, then I don't think another computer is really what you need.


And that's really what it is, you know -- your Windows computer. It has been proven time and time again by all the other millions of people that convert (that don't visit this thread) that the Migration Assistant application works. But if there are circumstances on individual computers preventing it, then there's no amount of tweeking Migration Assistant that will allow the transfer to happen.

There's only so much that Apple is able to do to a completely foreign operating system in terms of manipulation, enabling, and disabling of any services that are either built-in to the OS, or that you installed that you don't know how to maintain and operate.


That's the bottom line.

It might be a bad first experience, I can empathize with that, but geez.. move your data, and move on.

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User profile for user: OdynOOb
OdynOOb
User level: Level 1
0 points

Nov 13, 2011 3:11 AM in response to watts300

I agree that response was a little dramatic, now I'm very disapointed as well.


I hoped to be able to setup my iMac with my old Windows settings.

Not a very good idea anyway, I agree, but didn't really have the time to reconfigure everything.


I hoped Migration assistant would do at least part of that work.

Now I ended up loosing time 'cause of Migration assistant ...


As often, a word from Apple telling "they are aware of the problem and working on it" would help.


Windows easy transfert was able to transfert my data to a new PC.


Parallels "Migrate from a PC" tool was able to connect to my PC (unless Apple Migration's assistant), but fails soon after starting to transfert data.


So there's definitly something fishy here.


And help to understand why it's not working would be welcome.

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User profile for user: Madringles
Madringles
User level: Level 1
0 points

Nov 13, 2011 8:50 AM in response to watts300

I'll agree that this post was a little dramatic, but when the sales pitch of Apple is "it just works", you expect it to, and if the first ever experience of it is duff, well, what do you expect.


As far as saying it's not Apple's fault; in my trials with them (because I paid extra for support), they confirmed that when THEY tried it on THEIR computers, it didn't work either. Then they closed the case without telling me or giving any extra help (in fact I was still waiting for their next response when I logged in to ask what was happening and found it closed).


I transfered everything I could myself in the end.

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User profile for user: daveyw
daveyw
User level: Level 1
4 points

Feb 5, 2012 9:42 AM in response to martin03

A less dramatic approach is to just copy your stuff over yourself. Outlook data was a bit tricky, but I found an applet for a few pounds that would do it for me. ITunes took some time, and I ended up with lots of duplicates and lost all my playlists and play counts. Photo import after copying was pretty easy. In the end all ok. I like my mac. I might have appeared a bit dramatic before, looking back I appear to have fallen under the influence of some sort of reality distortion field. Once you unlearn the windows approach you'll find that it all just works.

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User profile for user: monorailpilot
monorailpilot
User level: Level 1
0 points

Feb 7, 2012 3:42 PM in response to Christian Swanson

Has anyone had any luck with this?


Here's my log from the iMac side. Same exact symptoms on the windows side...


Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac Migration Assistant[577]: Couldn't get a connection to the migrateTool after 1 attempt.

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: ----------

-> searchForValidSystems has arrived.

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (Snoop) Listening on 12 / 338099198

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: . Found disk (diskIdentifier=disk0, mountpoint=(null), isInternal=1, filesystem=(null))

Feb 7 18:28:30: --- last message repeated 1 time ---

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: . Found disk (diskIdentifier=disk0s1, mountpoint=(null), isInternal=1, filesystem=(null))

Feb 7 18:28:30: --- last message repeated 1 time ---

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: . Found disk (diskIdentifier=disk0s2, mountpoint=/, isInternal=1, filesystem=Journaled HFS+ hfs Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Apple_HFS)

Feb 7 18:28:30: --- last message repeated 1 time ---

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: . Found disk (diskIdentifier=disk0s3, mountpoint=(null), isInternal=1, filesystem=Journaled HFS+ hfs Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Apple_HFS)

Feb 7 18:28:30: --- last message repeated 1 time ---

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: . Found disk (diskIdentifier=disk0s2, mountpoint=/, isInternal=1, filesystem=Journaled HFS+ hfs Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Apple_HFS)

Feb 7 18:28:30 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: found _smsling._tcp. honPC_mpgkylejuk [xibalba,1]

Feb 7 18:28:34 janices-imac Migration Assistant[577]: Setting All Spaces For: <NSWindow: 0x7f9aaab10940>

Feb 7 18:28:35 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Pinging Server (Bonjour) ...

Feb 7 18:28:35 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) ** ?? ** SlingShot Client Connecting to honPC_mpgkylejuk

Feb 7 18:28:35 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) + client reset

Feb 7 18:28:36 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Request timed out...

Feb 7 18:28:36 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Other side needs to accept passcode...

Feb 7 18:28:36 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Pinging Server (Bonjour) ...

Feb 7 18:28:37 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: 20 seconds to go accept the migration on the other side...

Feb 7 18:28:37 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Request timed out...

Feb 7 18:28:37 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Other side needs to accept passcode...

Feb 7 18:28:37 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Pinging Server (Bonjour) ...

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: Handshake successful

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: SSLWrite failed in _writeData: 4294957490 errSSLClosedAbort

Feb 7 18:28:38: --- last message repeated 3 times ---

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: *!!* Warning incomplete data write.

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) + client reset

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) Other side needs to accept passcode...

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: (CLI) + client reset

Feb 7 18:28:38 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: 20 seconds to go accept the migration on the other side...

Feb 7 18:28:39 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: Handshake successful

Feb 7 18:28:39 janices-imac MigrateTool[594]: SSLWrite failed in _writeData: 4294957490 errSSLClosedAbort

Feb 7 18:28:39: --- last message repeated 4 times ---

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User profile for user: martin03
martin03
User level: Level 1
0 points

Feb 12, 2012 11:14 AM in response to monorailpilot

I finally transferred my files, folders and pics using a USB flash drive: i-tunes was easy using the 'Sharing' facility, and I have transferred Outlook messages, contacts and calendar using a $14 bit of software. See http//guides.macrumors.com and their note on how to move email from PC Outlook to Apple mail. Wish I had done this after the first failure of migration assistance to do the job. I guess it failed because of a Windows issue on my PC.

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User profile for user: RoyalHousehold
RoyalHousehold
User level: Level 1
4 points

Mar 24, 2012 1:05 AM in response to Christian Swanson

Re; I have a different situation. Two XP machines both both w XP SP3. The wirless netbook finds the iMac. The desktop tower connected either direct cable or through my Ethernet wiring in my home does NOT.


In Control Panel the BONJOUR service is a different release. HMMMMMMMMM?


Working wirless one is 3.0.0.10 and its .99MB - I CANT FIND THIS ANYWHERE TO DOWNLOAD?

NOT working wired one is 2.0.2.0 THs one is larger and seems to be the one being offered for download with the PRINT SERVER BONJOUR!


Havent gotten it to work but this is the first clue?

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XP SP3 Never Responds to Migration Assistant Authentication Request

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