asked on

Losing desktop, my documents when switching domains

I am moving user workstations from a SBS 2008 domain to a Linux Samba4 DC/AD both domains have the same name: hprs.local (they are not both online at the same time). I remove the workstation form the SBS 2008 domain, then connect to the Samba4. I do create the same user on the Samba4 domain using RSAT. When I log into the new domain as the same user, I have nothing on my desktop except workstation common programs such as anti-virus.

In C:\Users a new user has been created:

C:\Users\mark.hprs SBS 2008 user folder
C:\Users\mark.HPRS.000 Samba4 user folder

I have copied the desktop, favorites, etc. C:\Users\mark.hprs to C:\Users\mark.HPRS.000, and it seems to work, although I haven't checked all icons.

Is there not a way to use the existing user folder instead of creating a new one?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

John

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

David Johnson, CD

The way you did it is considered a NEW domain.. What you should do is add the Linux box as an additional server and once it is working properly decommission the SBS server.

Mark

ASKER

David Johnson:

What you should do is add the Linux box as an additional server

That sounds intriguing! I didn't think it was permitted to have more than one domain controller on a system at a time.

Can you elaborate a bit on how I would accomplish this? I guess It's not as simple as just adding the Linux DC into the LAN, right? A bit of a complication might be that the DC's are each designated 192.168.0.2 on their respective networks and I'd have to change one or the other. Changing the Linux one would probably require re-provisioning - which makes me nervous.

Mark

ASKER

It wasn't horribly tough to do this the hard way. I took all workstations off the new domain, resurrected the old SBS 2008, and re-added all workstations back to the old domain. I then copied \\oldDomain\\Users\RedirectedFolders\thisUser\[desktop\My Documents] folders to a holding folder per user. Then, switched workstations back to the new domain and copied the contents of these folders to C:\Users\newdomainuser. That worked fine and, in fact, the files thus copies synchronized onto the redirected folder hierarchy on the new DC RedirectedFolders directory. I missed a few stragglers on the first pass: Signatures, screen saver, and such, but those are minor detail.

Too bad I couldn't somehow re-use or migrate the old user account. Users had a lot of tweaking to do including rearranging icons, restoring taskbar icons, re-creating shortcuts (not copied from desktop?). I would have liked to have tried: David Johnson's suggestion about adding the Linux box as an additional server

John

@jmarkfoley - Thanks for the update and I was pleased to assist.