Cant use windows 8.1 Windows Easy Transfer on Windows 8.1

I agree, telling people to use an online service to transfer data and settings between computers is like my customer asking for a NAS, and me bringing a bundle of bananas into the data center, and saying here, just use this instead, these are wonderful bananas!

Microsoft is more out of touch with their customer base every year, and they wonder why stockholders have lost confidence in them.  They are a ship without a rudder, or the rudder is stuck into a position that is steering for an iceberg.

Wow, I just bought a new family PC shared by 3 different users with lots of different setting on for each  expecting to be able to use the WET facility to copy details across, and then I read this.  This is just UNBELIEVABLY bad service for microsoft.

Removing WET from 8.1 is a catastrophic failure for enthusiasts who wish to back up their user state and rebuild their computer with new parts and a fresh installation of Windows.

I don't WANT to use SkyDrive to back up several hundred gigs of file on a slow cable connection!  I want to simply dump all my files, settings, etc. into a file on an external hard drive.

Is that so much to ask?  Why are you trying to force people into the cloud whose situations don't work well in the cloud?  I'm absolutely baffled that Microsoft would do something so completely ridiculous!

Phydeux,

Yes, it was a preposterous move by Microsoft.  It was also invaluable to use for Virtual Machines.

I often would often use WET to transfer a user's stuff to a clean VM where I could verify it was up and running and I positively had the users machine captured before doing major upgrades or serious troubleshooting on PCs.

It was an elegant and simple solution for many of us to work on machines let alone upgrade our own.

Sure, I own backup software that can image, but that is not the same, and the footprint of the image is much larger.  The WET preserved email settings and other critical stuff.

Removing WET from 8.1 is a catastrophic failure for enthusiasts who wish to back up their user state and rebuild their computer with new parts and a fresh installation of Windows.

I don't WANT to use SkyDrive to back up several hundred gigs of file on a slow cable connection!  I want to simply dump all my files, settings, etc. into a file on an external hard drive.

Is that so much to ask?  Why are you trying to force people into the cloud whose situations don't work well in the cloud?  I'm absolutely baffled that Microsoft would do something so completely ridiculous!

Your idea probably will not work.  Grab a copy of the easy transfer file program migwiz.exe from windows 7 or 8 disk or working system and login with safe mode into 8.1 and use a program like eraser http://eraser.heidi.ie/  to delete the 8.1 easy transfer migwiz.exe file and replace with older version that will then work.  This is really your only option that actually works but getting the 8.1 migwiz file to delete so you can replace it is not as easy as people would like.  We can only hope that Microsoft brings back the full wet system in windows 10

You were right. When I tried to install the program it said that I didn't have admin rights. I will do what you have recommended. I want to transfer about 7GB of music and 8GB of photos and another 700Gb of video files to my secondary PC. I cant see doing that with Sky Drive or a flash drive. Connecting the two computers with my cable sure makes a lot more sense to me than those other options.