Getting What You Want from PC Transplant

When using the high-powered personality capture capabilities of PC Transplant in a large migration, it sometimes make sense to use PCT from the command line. In one case, it was the only way that the tool was able to function to help in a migration project.

In this specific case, a custom capture template file was defined, and the command line parameters were properly set. Each time, however, the resulting capture file did NOT contain those targeted files and folders.

Why?

As PCT executed from the network share, all of the PCT files were supposed to be read over the network, either via UNC share, or mapped drive. It was also observed that the process took a substantial amount of time, almost excessive.

As a troubleshooting test, all of the contents of the PCT folder were copied to a temporary folder on the workstation, and then the PCT command line was executed with the necessary options.

The user data was successfully captured to the appropriate network destination, with all of the specified folders being included.

As this scenario has worked successfully in other environments, the only supposition is that the LAN/WAN environment has some bandwidth concerns, or constraints. For some reason, the file reads occuring across the network were timing out, and the custom template file was not being read, and the default template file was being used.

Success

Ultimately, further testing proved this issue out, and the workaround was to copy the PCT folder to the workstation, and then run the PCT command line with the necessary options. The user data was successfully captured to the appropriate network destination.

It is always good to have a bulletproof and reliable network infrastructure on which to run Altiris products!