Performing Offline Migrations

You can use USMT to perform offline migrations. Offline migrations involve booting the computer into a Windows PE environment that includes the USMT files and then running ScanState against the installation of Windows on the computer's hard disk drive. You must still run the LoadState feature of the migration from within Windows 7. You cannot run LoadState when booted into a Windows PE environment.

An advantage of offline migrations is that the person performing the migration does not need administrator access to the computer on which they are performing the migration. You cannot perform an offline migration on a computer where BitLocker is. It is necessary to temporarily suspend BitLocker to allow USMT access to the files to be migrated.