Rename NT domain?

[SusanV]

Good morning all,

We still run NT4.0 domain and I need to rename the domain. Easy enough to do
on the domain controllers, but what is the impact to the XP Pro
workstations? I realize the Win98 boxes will have to be changed manually,
but there are only a couple of those left, not a problem to touch those few.
I understand I can use netdom to change domain membership on the XP boxes,
but what happens to the user profiles? Do they follow or is a new blank
profile of user.newdomainname created? Most of the users in our company have
been here for years and would be rather upset if they lost all their
settings. (Note that most of them don't have a floppy drive to use the
mostly useless files and settings transfer wizard.)

Yet another speedbump in my migration path <sigh>

TIA,
SusanV

 

[SusanV]

Hi Jesper,

Thanks for your response. Yes, I know NT is beyond passé - we are in the
planning stages of a migration to SBS 2003 R2. As to the 98 boxes, there are
only 2 and they will be replaced post-migration (finally - yay!)

The domain was originally named for the project group it was created for,
and that group no longer exists. Now they want the domain to reflect the
company instead (makes sense to me). I'm using Jeff Middleton's swing
method, and I have a test lab set up to run through all of this, so after I
build the temp DC before upgrading it to 2003 and AD, I'll give the domain
name change a shot with a client attached to verify that the workstations
are happy, and post back to let you (and anyone else going through this)
know the results.

Also thanks for the tip about the USB flash drives - I had no idea!

;-D

SusanV

 

[SusanV]

I'm doing a swing migration, preserving the domain SAM and the Exchange
stores. See www.sbsmigration.com for more info.

SusanV

 

[SusanV]

Changing the domain name in NT worked a treat. After renaming the domain on
the lab PDC the client machines see both old and new domain names in network
neighborhood and can access shares on both. Change the domain membership on
the clients and the desktop profiles remain precisely as they were prior to
the change.

SusanV

 

[SusanV]

Good points all - however 98% of the weird things done by previous admins
have been remediated, and the rest are not a big deal. By doing the swing
users desktop profiles will not change, and in a small company where I am
the entire IT department (plus other hats of course) running around and
backing up Favorites etc and then recreating the profiles is just not
something I have time to do. Most of my users are not particularly PC-savvy,
so asking them to do this sort of thing is for the most part out of the
question.

SusanV