Recover User Profile

[Yofnik]

Hello,
We recently upgraded from a Windows 2000 Server to a Windows 2003
Small Business Server environment. On the new server, the network
domain was given the same name as were all the user accounts.

When I first logged into my network account from my laptop, Windows XP
created a new user profile, as I expected. However, now I cannot view
my old user profile (which has ALL of my stuff) when I go to Control
Panel -> System -> Advanced -> User Profiles -> Settings.

It looks like my original User Profile now appears as Account Unknown.
I am assuming this is because my new user profile has the same domain
and user name. What's worse, is the option to Copy the profile to my
new profile is disabled. How do I recover all the stuff my old
Profile?

Is it possible to just update the ProfileImagePath registry setting
for the SID of my new user profile to point to the profile directory
of my old user account? This would make my life very easy as I
wouldn't have to copy anything. Somehow, I don't think its this easy
though.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Please help!

Thanks

 

[RBot]

This post should be put on the Windows Server 2003 SBS forum. I
think, from what I have seen from SBS, that you were supposed to
choose the profile to move over to the new domain when you ran
connectcomputer from the web browser. I have VERY limited experience
with SBS, so this could be incorrect, but I think you can run
connectcomputer from a web browser again, and select the profile you
would like to moveover. If anybody else sees this post and knows that
I am incorrect, please help, as I am not an SBS expert. As for the
OP, again, you should re-post this in the correct forum for more help.

 

[RBot]

Also, heres a link for migrating a profile to SBS:

http://www.certmag.com/articles/templates/cmag_howto.asp?articleid=819&zoneid=91

And here's the site to post this question to the SBS forum:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs/topics

Good luck.

 

[Yofnik]

The second section in the link you provided (the User Profile Registry
Way) is exactly what I needed. Thank you. As my original post
suggested, I was hoping that was possible. I just wanted to confirm
that it was before I messed anything up.

Thanks again!

 

[Yofnik]

The second section in the link you provided (the User Profile Registry
Way) is exactly what I needed. Thank you. As my original post
suggested, I was hoping that was possible. I just wanted to confirm
that it was before I messed anything up.

Thanks again!

 

[RBot]

Great! I'm glad to be of some help.

 

[Yofnik]

Just to wrap this up...

I was able to accomplish what I wanted. My preference was to avoid
copying an entire profile from one directory to another. Instead, I
updated the ProfileImagePath registry setting for my NEW account
listed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT
\CurrentVersion\ProfileList, to point to the directory of my OLD user
profile directory. I wanted to keep using the <myname>.<mydomain>
directory instead of the new <myname>.<mydomain>.000 directory.

Then, I changed the owner of the entire original c:\Documents and
Settings\<myname>.<mydomain>\ directory to my NEW domain user
account.

Once I shut down and logged back in as my user on the new domain,
everything worked as expected.

Thanks for your suggestions. I hope this helps someone else.

 

[RBot]

Thanks for posting this info. It's a good reference for the future.