Profile renaming. Still the best way?

1/ I have occasionally had to do a shutdown after the "logoff as tom" as the profile may not get uploaded in time / properly.  Reboot, logon as admin and all is well.

2/ Another option may be to use the "File & Settings Transfer Wizard". same effect I think just dont have to logoff.  Run FSTW as Bill, saving to local drive, Logon as Tom. Run FSTW to import into current profile.

Robberbaron,

Thanks. That's pretty much what I do if ntuser file gets hung.

BTW, the XP Files and setting transfer wizard approach . . . . i believe it REMOVES all the original user data (bill, in example I gave).  Maybe someone can confirm this, but that's what happened to me once I tried it.  I ran the wizard on bill, saved to local drive, logged on as TOM, imported the Bill file and guaess what, the TOM information was missing.  What I did was this:  I figured not to transfer the My Docs, because I did not want to take the time for 2.0 G of mydocs to be added to the trans file.  My thinking was that I would transfer everything and then just MOVE the MY Docs and set permissions to new user after the the wizard was done.  Well, when I went back to the original users my documents folder, they were GONE. All that was there was the default folders installed when profile is created!!

In an earlier situatuion I had started to do this and then decided against it before the "New Computer" phase. In that case, My Docs for the original user, and everything else, was still in place . . . .but only because I never actually ran the transfer. Well, this made me think it was a COPY situation when it is actually desighned to TRANSFER and wipe old info out.  

In the experience where I lost things, I would have been fine if I just included my Docs in the transfer.  But I thought I'd save time!  yeah, right.  Fortunaltely, I have a great undelete utility that I ran from a portable drive and got just about everything back.

I guess I just thought that, with all the other "let's make it easier" features of 2003, that there might be a better mousetrap for this as well. Maybe FSTW IS that mousetrap, just as long as you move EVERYTHING

See ya

I make sure that users move their own MyPictures / MyMovies / MyMusic subfolders of MyDocs in their own time,  cause if i get there, I'll delete the lot ! (it is a business computer)

Having said that, i've never had the wizard delete anything. I've transfered to a new computer and then kept using the old one just fine.

Is there ANY reason to give Tom all of Bill's computer settings?  My guess is that you only want to provide him with the documents, and perhaps Favorites and Desktop items.  

My Documents should actually be redirected to the server as a best practice, so all you would need to do is to move them from \\server\users\bill\bill's documents to \\server\users\tom\tom's documents after logging in once as Tom which will creat the My Documents folder on the server.

You DON'T want to use the transfer wizard OR copy a profile over the new one because SBS automatically creates configurations for Outlook, Fax Client, Sharepoint links, etc.  So, just add Tom with the add user wizard on the server, then go to the workstation and add his domain account to the local administrator's group of his workstation.  Then, if you want, copy over Bill's desktop and favorites.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

Jeff,

Thanks for the response.  I guess my question was related to SBS providing some sort of wizard that I was not aware of.  I have done it different ways depending on the layout of that particular network, I just wanted to be sure I wasn;t missing something.

Good point, Jeff.

I routineley reformat machines before I would join them to a domain anyway. Why shouldn't I follow the same practices in this type of transition.  Thanks