Migration Assistant hanging

I've been trying to migrate from my old (early 2009) iMac.

There's no firewire on the new iMac, so that option is out.

So I've connected the two with ethernet. I run Migration Assistant on both, and it all sets up correctly - I get the code number on the right machine, confirm it, and it gets ready to copy.

Then it hangs. I've left it hanging for 24 hours, so it's certainly not just taking a bit of time!

It hangs at the spot where it is supposed to be calculating the amount of space - usually, though, the various areas show up quickly, then it spends time seeing how much capacity each requires - in this case the hang happens before it even says what it can copy.

I've tried a few things.

- I've made sure that the network connection is set up properly

- I've logged on as root on both systems in case that would help

- I wanted to run the migration utility from the recovery disc, but the new iMacs don't have a recovery disk (a secondary question is how to create one!)

So I'm not stuck. I could just copy the files over, but, in the past, I've found migration assistant useful for getting the right permissions so applications work properly.

Any suggestions gratefully received.