Migration Assistant on MBP not recognising my old (Leopard) Mac

I have a new MBP and I'd like to migrate some of my account from my old Mac running Leopard. When I run Migration Assistant on the MBP it can seem to find the old Mac. They are connected via ethernet and a modem/router and I am able to see and login to the old Mac via Network Folder on the MBP.
Is it possible to use Migration Assistant in this way. What alternatives do I have, obviously doing a TIme Machine isn't an option being Leopard on the old Mac. I could manual take Mail folde, iTunes folder r and Safari bookmarks and forget the rest but figured there's a way to get Migration Assistant to do this.

Did you do software update on your old mac right before you tried this? You need to make sure it's got the latest version of Migration Assistant that it's compatible with.

Similar Messages

I used migration assistant to transfer files from my old compaq laptop to MBP but I have no idea where they are??

I used migration assistant to transfer files from my old compaq to Macbook pro but I don't know where to find all my pictures and music in the MBP. Where do they go?

I have now migrated my stuff again - I think the problem is that I clicked skip this user on previous attempts. Now I have 4 different users, one has my photos, one has my music and another has my documents as well as the one that is my usual one. I just need to figure out how to get the pics and music into the one I'm using day-to-day and I'll be sorted.

After using Migration Assistant some apps need to mount old drive

I recently used Migration Assistant to move ONLY my account info & files from my old G4 (running 10.4.3) to my new G5. I did NOT have it migrate any of my installed apps - I did clean installs (and then upgrades) of all apps.
Unfortunately a few apps ask to mount the old G4 drive before they will finish launching. Am giving the option to Cancel or Continue - if the old G4 is not on (with file sharing enabled) the affected app will hang, if the old G4 is on then clicking Continue will automatically mount it and the app will then work without problem.
Obviously there is a preference that was migrated from my account on the G4 to the G5 that has the old hostname embedded in it that is causing this. I have deleted all preferences (and other associated files) that I can find for the affected apps and then re-installed but still cannot run these apps without first mounting the old G4's drive.
The affected apps are Firefox and Photoshop CS2. Other web browsers such as Safari & I.E. work without problem, likewise for other Adobe CS2 apps such as InDesign & Illustrator. All of these apps were previously installed on the G4 when I did the Migrate - all were re-installed on the G5 instead of being Migrated.
Any ideas?
Best I can think is that some preference for these apps was moved from the G4 to the G5 when I migrated my account files/settings, but I've yet to be able to find it. (I even got so desperate as to try a recursive grep from / of * for the hostname of the old G4 and haven't found anything)
Thanks in advance.

I was finally able to fix this by using a couple of preference management utilities. Either I missed a key preference file for each app, or there are some hidden preference files, but when I used the prefence management utitilities (such as Preferntial Treatment, PrefEdit, Defaulter, or PlistEdit Pro) I was able to look at the prefs for Firefox and Photoshop CS2 and see where the hostname for the my old G4 was listed. (in the case of Photoshop CS2 it was actually in the list of recently opened files!! I should have noticed that from within Photoshop)
Now that I've removed those entries from preferences both Photoshop and Firefox run without prompting that the old G4 had to mounted.
oh, also... I found that for both Photoshop & Firefox I could actually get them to work without mounting the old G4's root volume - it just took clicking past the pop-ups (about 10 of them for each app) and waiting a long time as it searched around for the next one (maybe about 10 minutes total ... normally I don't have time to waste like that, but I got curious and made the time).
Thank you for your suggestions. as I had suspected, Migration Assistant moved some preferences from the old G4 that had it's hostname embedded and for some reason the apps weren't clearing them out when they were launched on the new machine (again, odd since I didn't have Migration Assistant move the apps from the old G4 to the new G5 - I installed each app on the G5 as a new install (aka: a "clean install") to avoid just this type of problem).
My real thanks are to the authors of the above mentioned preference management utilities.
Quad Core PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Migration Assistant using firewire not working between new iMac and G5. Ah!

I unpacked my new iMac 21.5' last nite and spent three painful hours trying to use Migration Assistant to tranfer files from my old iMac G5, which is using OS X 10.4.11.
I follow all of the instructions ver batim: connect the 400/800 firewire between the old and the new iMacs, start migration assistant on the new iMac, reboot the old iMac holding down the 'T' key until the firewire symbol pops up on the screen. At that point, the new iMac sits there with the message 'waiting for the other iMac to restart.' It never seems to recognize the old iMac. I tried rebooting, reconnecting the cable, etc. No luck.
I also tried using the ethernet option with no luck. The computers find each other but after entering the 'code' twice, the old mac gets stuck 'searching for other computers on the network.'
Any advice? I'd really like to use my new iMac!!!!

May not help but give this a try on the G5:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
I would also first turn off both computers then connect the FW cable. If both computers have a FW800 port then you can use a standard FW800 cable. Boot the G5 into TDM. After the TDM screen appears boot the new computer normally.

I use migrate assistant to move files from my old pc to the new Mac , but it creates the user account. How can i delete the unwanted user account.

i use migrate assistant to move files from my old pc to the new Mac , but it creates the user account. How can i delete the unwanted user account.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
That's the classic behaviour after using Migration Assistant and that's normal.
To transfer the data from the new user account to your old user account, you can follow some steps. Here is all the information you need to do this > https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5472

HT2518 I used Migration Assistant to tranfer files from an old PC to New Mac.

I used Migration Assistant to tranfer files from an old PC to New Mac. Now I have two user accounts with slightly different names on the Mac. Any way to merge into one account? Thanks.

Combine two+ Users Accounts on the same machine

Ran migration assistant I do not like having to sign in to pc or Mac at startup how can I comletely remove pc

Ran migration assistant. Do not like having to sign in to either pc or Mac at start up What can I do?

You can setup your account to automatically log in after startup process: OS X Yosemite: Login Options pane of Users & Groups preferences

Will migration assistant delete my files on my old mac?

Will migration assistant delete my files from my old mac? I just want to copy it all to my new mac Any tips?
Thx in advance.

They are the same version 10.5.8
But do they need to be the same version to work on any mac?

Migration Assistant Mav.: not showing ML Time Machine backup

Hi Mac community,
my own MBP mid 2010:
clean install of Mavericks
connected FireWire 800 external hard disk with recent Time Machine backup done in Mountain Lion
started Migration Assistant, selected the Time Machine disk, and transferred all user data
everything worked absolutely PERFECTLY and now Mavericks runs smoothly with all my old user data
So I wanted to do the same thing with a relative's late 2009 iMac:
still in Mountain Lion, doing Time Machine backups to TWO different USB 2.0 hard disks
browsing the Time Machine disks manually to check whether all the files are there -- they are, including the (hidden) ~/Library folder
clean install worked fine, Mavericks runs OK
starting Migration Assistant in Mavericks ⇒ and - OH HORROR - the connected external Time Machine hard disk does not show up as a source - in fact, NOTHING shows up
So I copied over the data manually, for which I had to enable the root account (how else would one delete/replace a whole ~/Library folder??)
Then I tried to fix permissions manually (because other users could now read the files in the home folder).
All the old data (mails, contacts, calendars) is still there, but the whole thing doesn't really run smoothly; each time one logs into the account, keychain asks weird questions and dock icons pointing to programs show questions marks again. Later today, I'll try to fix permissions for the home folder as a whole (Recovery Boot ⇒ Terminal ⇒ resetpassword ⇒ Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs), but I'd rather do another clean install and somehow get Migration Assistant to offer me the Time Machine backup as a source for user data transfer - AS IT SHOULD in an OS that 'just works' ...
Anything I could do to convince Mavericks to use my old Time Machine backup??
This is a real nightmare for me ⇒ I f*cked up a relative's system -- really hope I can fix it again.
Cheers, folks!

sorry, i don't know what else it could be then. if you have another external drive you can try doing a full system restore from the TM backups onto that drive and see if MA will recognize that drive and migrate from it. other than this there is always manual migration. slow and tedious but it can be done. see this link for help with that
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507

Migration Assistant in Mavericks not listing Users

I thought I would experiment with using Migration Assistant on my two MBPs since I will be helping someone tomorrow transfer their data from an old iMac to a new one.
I have a Mavericks MBP and a Mountain Lion MBP and connected them together via ethernet. I opened MA on the Mavericks MBP, followed instructions and opened MA on the ML MBP. Confirmed Passcode and clicked continue and waited for the files to list on the Mavericks MBP.
Applications, Settings, and Other files were listed but no User accounts were listed. Only those three items were shown.
I'm in the admin account on both Macs and the ML MBP has four user accounts.
What gives? Why aren't Users listed also?
Thanks for any help.

Here's some more information for you.
I have an iMac, Model 10,1 , with Mountain Lion installed. So, both iMac and one of the MBPs are running the same OS.
I thought I would try MA between those two. I set everything up to transfer from my ML MBP to the iMac, and all data was listed in MA on the iMac. MA worked great.
So why wasn't all the data listed on the Mavericks MBP when I ran MA between the MBPs?
The two MBPs are identical, Model 3,1 , except for the OS, one is the latest Mavericks version and the other is the latest Mountian Lion version.
I also noticed in MA on the Mavericks MBP that when the three items were listed only the Settings item had calculated the size correctly, the Applications and Other files were showing 0kb, which I know is incorrect.
On the iMac the sizes for Users, Applications, Settings, and Other files, were all shown and were correct.
Does anyone know why MA is not working between two identical MBPs, but is working between a newer iMac and older MBP?
Thanks...

After Migration Assistant, Time Machine refuses to use old backups

I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed with Time Machine.
I just dropped $2,000 on my second-ever Mac, a 15" MBP (Core i7 2GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB 5200rpm hard drive, the stock low-end 15" config). From what I'd heard about Migration Assistant, I believed it would easily move my stuff over to my new Mac. For the most part it did, but a few things didn't transfer. Other posts on the topic detail them accurately - Desktop icon layouts, some settings, Growl, etc.
I told Migration Assistant to use my Time Machine backups, which have been happening without incident for a long time. My oldest backup is December 2010.
Now that my new MBP is about 99% set up like my old MBP, I am having a problem with Time Machine.
I get the error "Time Machine could not complete the backup. This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires 355.61 GB but only 176.44 GB are available."
Looking at the Time Machine drive in Finder, I found that Time Machine is trying to create a new folder for backups and do a full backup. Where there was once one folder, "[My Name]'s MacBook Pro," there is now an additional folder, "[My Name]'s MacBook Pro 2." Time Machine is trying to back up into that second directory.
Now, I get it that this is a different computer. But really, if I use Migration Assistant to restore my Time Machine backup, I think it would be safe for OSX to assume that I want to continue using those backups. What is especially disappointing for me is, there were things that Migration Assistant did not restore properly. I probably haven't found them all. That makes it CRUCIAL that I have my Time Machine backups, but it seems that Apple thinks it's perfectly normal for me to want to FORMAT my Time Machine drive after Migration Assistant did a half-*** job of migrating my data. I need those backups now more than ever.
I do also have an online backup, but I still don't feel very comfortable destroying six months of local backups just to make Time Machine work again. Both MBPs were running the same (latest) version of Snow Leopard, so it stands to reason all that needs to happen is a very small incremental backup.
I have been Googling for hours. All I've found is a procedure for 10.5 that doesn't work in 10.6 where I get down into the Terminal and change a MAC address in a file on the Time Machine volume. But that's it. In fact it seems like there's no answer.
Come on Apple, you do everything else better than the competition. Why do I have to nuke six months of backups or buy a new 2TB external drive to make Time Machine work again? I assure you I want to continue making incremental backups against my old Time Machine backups, and promise to hold you not responsible should I screw something up by grabbing an old system file or something from February.
Would appreciate any help anyone could offer.

Did you use Setup Assistant when your new Mac first started up, or skip that, create a user account, then use the Migration Assistant app in your Applications/Utilties folder?
If you used Setup Assistant, when you started your first backup you should have gotten the message in #B5 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It sounds like you didn't (or chose Start New Backup). And no, the Leopard procedure doesn't work on Snow Leopard. That's what #B5 is for.
Usually, if you use Setup Assistant, Time Machine will still say it's going to do a full backup, and make room for it, but actually do an incremental backup (very, very slowly).
Either way, it usually deletes a lot of old backups. We're hoping that will be fixed in Lion.
Once it's decide to make a new backup, there's no known way to prevent it.

I used migration assistant to transfer data from my old computer to the new

The problem is it transferred data from an old back drive so the data is not current.
Can I run migration assistant again to transfer data? Will it overwrite the data mistakenly transferred?

If you migrate a user account that already exists by name, it'll force you/ask you for a name of this user... how many Username are on this Mac now?

Duplicate Users Migration Assistant on MBP Retinal

Just moving to a new MBP Retinal and unfortunately now have 2 user IDs.
I had to stop the Setup Assistant and restart with the Migration Assistant. Instead of transferring settings, etc to the original ID, it required creation of a second, redudant ID. But all the settings, etc are in the secondary ID.
What do I do? Delete the second one? Transfer contents to the original one first? How?
Background: I cancelled the original transfer because doing it over WiFi was going to take an estimated 255 hours+ (not exaggerating).
After buying a $40 Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter, it then took 4 hours out of an estimated 1.5 <g>, but required the duplicate ID.
There is apparently no way during the migration/setup process to 1) Pause 2) select the transfer method 3) Cancel or back out and 4) transfer settings to an existing ID.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide some help.

Yes, that is the unfortunate way MA works in contrast to SA. The first one doesn't have these issues since it gets the Mac in a totally blank state so it can create whatever IDs it needs. But MA gets an already preconfigure unit and can't overwrite what's already in there. So you can check and confirn that all your stuff is indeed in the second ID and then purge the first.
Only way for SA to run again would require reinstalling the Mac from scratch. And I've always had the niggling suspicion that the reinstaller will only put in the standard base system. Not all the extra goodies you get with a new Mac, such as iLife. (Note that in all my Mac OS X Macs dating back to the year 2000, never had to do a complete bare drive install. Always had the fortune of migrating and not losing any of my fast accumulating stuff)

Migration Assistant on MBP stalls, fails

We have a nice new MBP and are trying to move the contents of a PB G4 to it with Migration Assistant.
All works well with FireWire cable and disk mode and initial apparent transfer of data, but the MA process has stalled on both of two attempts, at different points. In one case we left the two connected so the transfer would occur overnight but in the morning we found the old machine with the firewire logo stuck in one spot on the screen (instead of hopping around like it does initially) and the MBP MA message still at 49 minutes remaining.
So we have a new MBP and can't get the old data onto it.
Please share your ideas, thanks.

Sometimes Migration Assistant just doesn't work. For whatever reason it just doesn't copy everything. Anyway, try repairing the disk permissions on your PowerBook and macBook Pro and see if it helps.

Can I use Migration Assistant to install Tiger on my old Mac?

I am about to buy a MacBook that will, of course, come with Tiger and I will use Migration Assistant to bring my files over from my Powermac G5 which has just Panther installed. Since I am keeping both machines, can I use Migration Assistant to migrate the Tiger OS over to my Powermac? And can I do the same with the newer versions of software that will come with the MacBook (iLife etc.)?
Dual 2GHz Powermac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

The Migration Assistant can only transfer data to a computer which already has the Migration Assistant installed, and it will not transfer the whole Mac OS X setup in any configuration. Furthermore, the version of Mac OS X which comes with a MacBook is not compatible with your Power Mac G5. If you want Tiger on your older computer, you need to purchase a new copy.
(12427)

Migration Assistant on MBP not recognising my old (Leopard) Mac

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for