Migration Assistant says "Less than a minute to go" but this goes on for hours and nothing gets transferred to my new iMac 27"

Am trying to transfer all my data from my old MacBook Pro 10.6.8 , 2.8GHz, 4GB memory to my new iMac 27" 10.9.4, 3.2 GHz, 8GB and after 3 days I still can't get there.
I am using Migration Assistant. Both computers are on wi fi. I have connected them together with an ethernet cable.
I can get the process going but hours later the computers say "less than a minute remaining" . I have left them alone for more hours but nothing moves on. I them quit and of course I find that nothing has been transferred.
I am not very skilled at all this so I hope someone can help me with an easy solution.
Thank-you

Hello again baltwo
The above didn't work so I then tried what you suggested and erased the hard disc, reloaded the OSX software and then tried the Migration Assistant again. Same old problem only now it doesn't get beyond "new mac selecting what to import". When I press continue the screen just goes grey then back to the login page.
However another problem I have is that the free 'bundled apps' ... Pages. Numbers, Keynote, Garageband, iMovie and iPhoto have disappeared! I've been to the App store and into my account but they are not there under 'Purchases".
This is all turning into a nightmare so any help would be very welcome.
Thank-you

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HT4796 I have has message saying less than a minute remaining (for about 20 minutes now...and the mac seems hung, curser wont move etc??

My migration assistant seem to have got hung up...the message says, less than a minute but that was 20 mintes ago.... the mouse wont move either now????

You may not have created a mess, it's possible you simply don't know where your data is after migrating. Had you followed the Setup Assistant's on-screen prompts when you initially turned on your new system you would be running just fine by now. My guess is you haven't been exposed to Pondini's Lion Setup Assistant tips.
Migration Assistant (MA) and Setup Assistant (SA) are cousins, similar but different. The primary difference is MA creates a new user account which can be confusing to some users. If you successfuly migrated then log out of your existing using account and you should see the new user account. Log into that account then you should see the migrated data. If you do then use Pondini's Transferring files from one User Account to another.
However if you have totally made of mess out of things then I'd start over, this time using the Setup Assistant Tips beginning where he discusses Second Chance.

HT4796 It says "less than a minute remaining" and has said that for 12 hours now.

It says "less than a minute remaining" and has been stuck on that for over 12 hours. I'm transferring information from my PC to Mac - all was going well for the first 8 hours, then it just hung.

Hold down the power button for a few seconds to force a shutdown, then restart. It will probably be OK.

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I have the same problem. It is only with tv shows and only with programs I have downloaded after the software update.
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I decided to take a risk with my iMac and do an erase and install with Leopard, the version of OS X it's been running for years now. The reinstall went fine migration assistent got me started transferring my information from my Time Machine external USB 2.0 hard drive. It said it was just over 200 GB of information. That proceeded fine until it reached the "Less than one minute remaining" mark. It's been sitting here for over 12 hours in the "transferring files to support applications" process. What should I do? Is it alright for me to manually turn off the computer and re-boot? There is no cancel button or anything. I do get the pleasant clunking sound when I hit enter.

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Migration stalled with "less than a minute remaining"

This issue was discussed back in April, but no definitive solution was found.
I installed Mountain Lion on an older MacBook Pro and all went well until I got to the Setup Assistant after restart. The migration of my files from a Time Machine backup stalled with "less than a minute remaining" while "transferring files to support applications". Apparently this is a known issue that affects older Macs upgrading from Snow Leopard. I have two questions about this:
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2. What is the best way to abort the stalled transfer without risk of damaging the data on my Time Machine backup drive? Mountain Lion refused to install on my startup drive until I erased it, so my Time Machine backup is the only copy I have of my data. Since Setup Assistant is not frozen, I can hit command-Q and Setup Assistant offers to shut down; but is the data on my backup drive at risk if I shut down and start over?
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Has your Migration Assistant actually crashed? I am restoring my computer from a hard drive failure and the following dialog has been displayed for the last 12 hours. I clicked on the App in the dock to see if it was displaying as crashed, it doesn't appear to be.
I checked the "Get Info" on the Hard Drive Volume, and it is showing a very slow progression of used bytes. I suspect the transfer is still continuing, just very slow as I have so much data. I think it is a matter of quanity of files rather than "file size".
Should be interesting to see in another day or so to see if it completes. :-)

If you migration hangs at "less than a minute remaining," maybe ok still

I just wanted to describe my experience using the Migration Assistant app with my new 15" MacBook Pro i7 model.
I had a Core2Duo MacBook (black casing) with about 185GB of data on it. I setup the Migration Assistant process to import the data to my new Macbook Pro, after about 4 hours of importing it hung at the 10 minute remaining point telling me to check my connection (ethernet) for problems. I changed out the ethernet cable and had to click "continue" about 3 times before it started working again.
Then at the "less than one minute remaining" point, which was an hour of waiting for me, I called Apple Support and basically we determined it wasn't going to move and just canceled and rebooted.
At first it appeared nothing transferred to the MacBook Pro because I was greeted with the choose language prompts upon first rebooting. However, just go through those as normal, choose NOT to import any data then go to the desktop (you may still have to create a dummy login account) then go to Accounts and choose the one you migrated which hopefully is there, then just delete the dummy account.
Glad I realized this before going through another 4+ hour migration!
Hope this can help someone if it happens to them.

I ran into something similar yesterday while running Migration Assistant.
I solved this riddle myself by turning off the WiFi on both computers. For some reason, with an ethernet connection checked, the Migration Assistant still chose to transfer my data via WiFi with quickest time estimate of over 24 hours.
The only other time I did this with Migration Assistant, it apparently used the ethernet cabling right from the start.
This latest attempt is only going to take about 2 hours. As to why Migration would choose wifi when there was a valid ethernet connection available, I'll leave that to the experts. With AirPort turned off, I transfered about 120GB of data in slightly less than 2 hours.

HT4796 My computers have been saying less than a minute remaining for like 3 hours now, any suggestions?....

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I have left the machine for 24 hours, and then restarted the donor Laptop. The new laptop now tells me that migration is complete but when I reboot it is clear that nothing has happenned.
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What a waste of three days!!

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HT4623 itunes keep saying theres network setting or connectivity issues after downloading ios 7 for hours and never completes the download. What do I do?

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1.Turn off your device. If you can't turn it off, press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time and wait a few seconds for it to turn off.
2.Plug the device's USB cable into your computer only.
3.Hold down the device's Home button as you connect the USB cable to it.
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It would be a great idea to uninstall Norton - you don't need it and it has a pretty poor reputation for mucking up otherwise healthy Macs.
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To uninstall Norton:
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Migration assistant freezes at "Less than a minute remaining"

I am installing Leopard to a new HD on a PPC G5; during install I have chosen to migrate from my PPC G4 running Leopard via FireWire. It goes along for hours and makes steady progress, until it gets to the very end, it stalls at migrating Application Support with the time remaining saying "Less than a minute", which it has been saying for over 7 hours.
This is the second time I have tried this, the first time I had to do a hard reboot because there is no option to quit during migration. When it restarted it went right back to the "Welcome..." intro. I figured I must have done something (don't know what) wrong, so I did a hard reboot from the installation disk, reformatted the drive and tried it again. Same thing... any idea why this may be happening?

since this is clearly not working I suggest you try migrating user settings only (no applications). If that doesn't work either you'll have to migrate by hand.
see this post for help with this:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507

No progress from less than a minute, with upgrade to mountain lion.

I've had my install running all night, its gotten to the part which says 'less than a minute remaining" and has ceased progress, the bar is still moving to indicate the computer is responsive.
Basically my issue is this; do i restart the computer knowing that i might damage the hard-drive, with no back-up, or should i just wait it out for another day or so........
Not keen to damage the HD because i only got this one a few months ago (as i killed the last one, unknown reason)
The comp only has ~50gb of data on it, it can hold near 500gb so overloading it isnt the issue. 4gb RAM i think.
was running lion but slowly so i decided to upgrade, its a macbook pro bought a year and a half ago (circa 2011ish)
Desperately need help, unsure of what i should do... oh and i think my applecare plan has run out...

Okay, well don't worry, you will make it out okay.
I also ment to tell you that you get 90 days of phone support on your ML so you can call apple care and they will help you out. Just let them know you purchased it.
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HELP! LOCKED IN LIMBO W/MIGRATION ASSISTANT DATA TRANSFER: "LESS THAN 1 MINUTE LEFT" FOR 10 HOURS

This has happened before. I'm migrating from one Macbook Pro to another Mac (though it doesn't seem to matter if it's a MBP or other Apple powerbook) and it gets almost to the end of the bar with the blue water line a sliver away from finishing but it stays at "less than one minute remaining" as it finishes up migrating settings. Going on 10 hours now.
Have read other discussions from 2009 to earlier this month w/this issue.Some say it's a Lion OS issue that's been acknowledged as a flaw. Others had the same issue w/Leopard & say to ignore the remaining minute & leave it alone until it finishes which could take a day or more. I'm moving almost 300 GB of data. I've done this before and had same issue and interrupted it. I manually migrated over applications, documents, etc, one by one and it still took overnight just to do some of the data, so this is not an inordinate amount of time.
If it's going to complete, I'll let it run. If it's not, I'd like to know so I don't waste more time trying... Thanks in advance for assistance w/this conundrum.

I'm not a big fan of migration assistant, because this happens all the time. I'd give it a few more hours, then say "I give up."
Why didn't you use the Setup Assistant on the target mac using the firewire disk mode? I don't have absolute evidence, but you rarely see issues with people who use the Setup Assistant with a newly installed OSX (or brand new Mac).

Migration Assistant says "Less than a minute to go" but this goes on for hours and nothing gets transferred to my new iMac 27"

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