Windows Easy Transfer: XP to Windows 8

I'm likely to be migrating a friend from an XP PC to a new Windows 8 system in the near future. Previously I've used Windows Easy Transfer (WET) to move data from XP to Windows 7 and it's been easy and successful.

I've used WET running on the XP PC to copy data from that PC to an external drive. Then run WET on the W7 PC to bring in the data from the external drive to the W7 PC.

Reading around I'm getting conflicting information whether using WET in this way will work when running the 'import' on a W8 PC. I've seen and heard it said that WET on W8 expects data to have come from a W7 PC and can't, or won't, bring it otherwise.

Has anyone any actual experience of this and can confirm, or deny, whether the issue exists.

If it does I can get round it by taking the data 'through' my W7 PC. But I'd prefer to know in advance.

As I may be in the same situation in the future is there any reason why just copying the My Documents folder from the XP machine onto a Win 8 machine won't do the same.
That is exactly the procedure I used going from XP to Vista and then as the My Documents was on a separate partition just installed Win 7 then pointed it to the correct My Documents folder

WET does a lot more than just My Documents

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/transfer-d... describes how to use WET between xp and w8

Looking here http://www.laplink.com/index.php/specialpages/pcmove... they claim it doesn't work - but then again they are trying to sell a product
Going back to your point - I wouldn't rely on Microsoft doing anything properly so I will stick with the old fashioned method and rely on a clean install with bits transferred as needed

EDIT
Having seen the post by Batboy the data which can be transferred is only documents etc so no real advantage over doing it the manual route and for favourites etc in the browser just export and import as we don't use IE at all

Edited by deleted (Sun 12-Jan-14 22:19:37)

Indeed, that's the normal way to use WET. The only extra point there is not to 'import' Windows settings.

I can't find it now but did read earlier that WET on 8 won't bring in data from WET output on an XP machine.

As and when I have to do it, I'll see how it goes, it's not a disaster if it doesn't work, either directly or via a W7 intermediary, as all the data is supposed to be on Dropbox anyway. WET can be convenient for taking program settings and the like over.

Reading that article seems to suggest that WET won't transfer either via a WET transfer cable or via a network, only via an external drive, which is what I do anyway.

I suspect I'll do belt and braces and copy the XP stuff to external drive, and also run WET.