Question

Change user and keep the same profile (quickest way)

Asked by: onlinerack

I have 50 machines running in workgroup (not my office). I was tasked to get those users onto the domain. So I need to go to everymachine and join it. The problem is once this is done, the user gets a new profile. I am trying to find if there is an easy way to keep the same profile associated with the new user. (favorites, outlook configs, desktop, my documents... etc)
There is a utility called quest that can do this from domain to another... it is expensive though and requires a lot of work to get it setup. Thought may be you experts have something up your sleeves that can help.

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Asked On
2006-10-05 at 22:45:08ID22015095
Tags

change

,

profile

,

user

,

keep

,

quickest

Topic

Windows XP Operating System

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: ruijietanPosted on 2006-10-05 at 22:58:53ID: 17674330

 

by: inbarasanPosted on 2006-10-06 at 00:12:25ID: 17674546

Dear onlinerack,
In which case you can do the following to do the migration. I use to use this during Windows NT days. It will still work as we use this if the no of users are less and we need to migrate them to our domain

1.     Login as local administrator
2.     Move the computer to new domain using Domain admin Login
3.     Reboot the system
4.     Login as the user of that particular system to the new domain so that a default profile is created with that user name.
5.     Log off the system and login as Domain Admin to newDomain
6.     Add the user newdomain\userid to local administrator group if you want to grant the user with local admin rights
7.     Delete the new profile which was created when you logged in first using the user name after the migration and rename the old profile with the new profile name.

If the user name is xxx, after you logged in to domain it would have created profile called xxx. if the user was using yyy while he was in workgroup then delete xxx profile and rename the old profile from yyy to xxx

8.     Logoff  the system

9.     Logon to the system with the user login to new Domain

Migrated completed successfully. Happy Migrating

Cheers!
Inba

 

by: maehdrosPosted on 2006-10-06 at 07:07:37ID: 17676453

I always use the method described by inbarasan with one important distinction:

Step 6 should say, "You must either add the user (newdomain\userid) to the local administrator group or change the permissions to the profile directory to include the user (newdomain\userid) and reset permissions to all child objects.

The user must have full permissions to the profile.

One other thing: The system sometimes locks files in the "temporary internet files" folder unless you reboot after step 4 or exclude that directory.

Cheers.

 

by: onlinerackPosted on 2006-10-06 at 07:14:56ID: 17676503

Would that retain the settings of outlook and all registry references? Do I not need to worry about any corruption? (SID issues)

 

by: inbarasanPosted on 2006-10-06 at 07:27:48ID: 17676642

There won't be any corruption. I have done multiple times

 

by: onlinerackPosted on 2006-10-09 at 17:40:34ID: 17694911

Thank you. I will try it :)
When you say rename it, you mean go to C:\document and settings\USERID  correct, change it through explorer.
I think this is what you meant. Just wanted to confirm.

 

by: onlinerackPosted on 2006-10-09 at 18:29:09ID: 17695114

Do I need to worry about registry hives?

 

by: maehdrosPosted on 2006-10-09 at 21:30:29ID: 17696109

You don't need to worry about registry hives. The user hive is stored with the profile. I.e. c:\documents and settings\username\ntuser.dat.

Check out this article for more info on the user hive: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/093238f3-5064-470e-a281-0eb1c28b9cf01033.mspx?mfr=true

Yep, rename c:\documents and settings\useried. Explorer is fine.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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