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:
- I download and installed Migration Assistant for Windows
- 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.
- 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.
- I run Migration Assistant on the XP machine
- The Mac now sees the XP machine in Migration Assistant
- I select the XP machine and continue to the authentication step
- The Mac spits out an authentication code
- The XP machine appears to be waiting to hear from the Mac
- Everybody waits for everyone else
- Two hours go by
- 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.
