Migration Toolkit won't transfer some data

[Robert Glover]

This is maddening. It's been happening for 3+ years over multiple versions of the Migration Toolkit.

I'm trying to port an MSSQL database to MySQL so I can be rid of Microsoft once and for all. But all of the major tables in my db won't transfer. Here are some examples from the migration report:

`forums_dbo`.`users`
--------------------
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDs, ...' for column 'sig' at row 86
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBD fr...' for column 'sig' at row 304
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBD is...' for column 'sig' at row 53
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDPod...' for column 'sig' at row 28
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDg ' for column 'location' at row 403
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDbec' for column 'location' at row 43
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBD' for column 'fname' at row 6
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDs &...' for column 'sig' at row 42
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBD' for column 'lname' at row 40
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBD' for column 'location' at row 56
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDki' for column 'location' at row 42
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDfro...' for column 'sig' at row 135
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBD Bi...' for column 'sig' at row 161
Incorrect string value: '\xEF\xBF\xBDre' for column 'location' at row 123
0 row(s) transfered.


This is a table with over 20,000 rows, yet it didn't transfer any of them. I don't know where it's finding those illegal "values" because they don't exist in the rows. There may be some HTML in some of the fields, but that's it. And that's just that one table. I get the same kind of error on others too.

Is there a way to fix this, or am I stuck in MSSQL forever? I'd rather not try to write my own migration script in another language, because it would take forever to execute on the larger tables.

Thanks!

Rob