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Quick help with profiles

Mishra

I have a few users who are on a domain, we will use black.com. I completely destroyed their domain and I am rebuilding it with black.ds. I assume when I rejoin their computers to the domain that they will have to build a new profile.

I've copied profile directories over and tried to log in with their account but not all settings come back. Background, custom color scheme, things like that. How can I rejoin their computers to the new black.ds domain and retain all settings?

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Comments

Sie

You would have to ensure you capture all the settings from the previous profiles

IE:

Desktop Path is Username\Desktop.

Quick Launch Path is Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Further settings etc are included within NTUSER.DAT file.

What did you do to the old domain? Maybe it can be repaired?

sprkymrk

Once they log in with their new domain\userid, you then copied their old profile over the new one, correct? The ntuser.dat file contains most everything. It's not a perfect process though, you may have to recreate some things manually.

dynamik

Can they still log into the old domain with cached credentials or have you rejoined all the computers already? You can use the user state migration tool or the scan state/load state tools if they can still log into their old accounts. Ideally, this would have been done before you changed domains. Also, were you unable to simply rename the domain or did you have to scrap the old one for other reasons? I would assume they could have kept their old profile if the domain was renamed, but I'm not sure since I've never done this.

Mishra

Thank you for the replies.

Sie

I just removed it because the domain controller (the only system they have) was crazy virus infected. I possibly could have created another machine as a backup domain controller and switched when I rebuilt the box... But deleting the domain is faster.

sprkymrk

Okay so copying the profile is the best way to do it even though you don't retain exactly everything?

dynamik

They can log in with cached credentials but not into the domain any longer. I have not rejoined the computers yet. I know the computer migration tool could do the same thing as USMT but this works better when you are transfering their entire desktop to a new machine. I am just looking to rebuild a profile to the exact way it was on the old domain and from experience, this is never a neat process.

Sie

Mishra wrote:

Sie

I just removed it because the domain controller (the only system they have) was crazy virus infected. I possibly could have created another machine as a backup domain controller and switched when I rebuilt the box... But deleting the domain is faster.

Where was these profiles stored? If it was the only system they had im guessing on the DC?

If this is the case you need to consider the possibilty that the profiles are virus infected and moving them across could result in the same situation you had before.

I would be tempted to move these and throughly scan prior to moving them to the new machine.

(Slightly un-related but anyone else getting a flash.ocx error on this page with the 'Punch in your name...' banner??)

WanBoy67

I would think you would already have the situation in hand at this stage but here's a Microsoft KB article which might help you for future use. No need to copy profiles across, just change where they are pointing to. It doesn't work all of the time I have to admit - but when it does - sweet!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324734