sp2 - sysprep overwrites default user

[Adin Sabic]

Hi,

I have updated my XP image to include SP2. After
installing sp2 I ran sysprep to prepare for imaging.

After the machine is rebooted the mini setup wizard runs
and completes with no errors. However once rebooted and
logged back on my customised default user profile has been
replaced by the basic original XP one, with all my
changes lost. I have tried it several times and get the
same results.

Is it by design that in SP2, sysprep regenerates the
default user profile. Is there a work around as it?

Thanks

Adin

 

[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello Adin,
Yes this happens with SP2.
There is no workaround for this currently
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
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[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 00:26:53 GMT, (e-mail address removed)

Yes this happens with SP2.
There is no workaround for this currently

Any loss of user settings is a bad bug.

Any ETA for when SP2 will be fit for use in these situations?

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The most accurate diagnostic instrument
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[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello,
There is no loss of user settings. This is customization process, some
people want this to happen while others do not.
The default user profile only contains default settings, not user specific
settings. Any users that already exist retain their settings.
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------

 

[David Mathog]

Hello,
There is no loss of user settings. This is customization process, some
people want this to happen while others do not.
The default user profile only contains default settings, not user specific
settings. Any users that already exist retain their settings.
Thanks,

Pray tell, when a _new_ user is created on the (Samba) server and that
user logs on for the first time on one of the N identical lab
workstations, how is that new user's account supposed to
pick up the default settings intended by the lab manager if not
from the default user account? So why then does Sysprep wipe out
the default account??? Any site that wanted to have an
empty default user always had the option of setting
it up that way, but now we have NO OTHER OPTION on a
ghost rollout! You are absolutely correct
this is a customization process. However it is now one where
we can no longer costumize one reference machine's
default user and then ghost that image to N other machines.
Just admit that its a bug (a really, really, really bad bug)
and get it fixed pronto.

This is a deal breaker. Time to wipe the
one SP2 machine I just built and re-ghost it back to SP1.

Please let us know when a version of sysprep arrives that's actually
_useful_ for rolling out ghosted images.

Regards,

David Mathog

 

[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello David,
You customize the local administrator profile rather than the default user
profile. Then all your customizations in the local administrator are moved
over to the default user account. Pretty much the same process, this is
what people have been asking for. This was a design request, people wnated
this functionality, this was supposed to be enabled in SP1. It's not a
bug, it's doing exactly what it was intended to do.
It should have been an option however not happening all the time. It's not
really a sysprep issue, it's a setup issue.
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------

From: David Mathog <mathog@readbackwards_m_a_p_s_o_n.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: sp2 - sysprep overwrites default user
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 10:19:59 -0700
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>

<[email protected]>

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

There is no loss of user settings. This is customization process, some
people want this to happen while others do not.
The default user profile only contains default settings, not user specific
settings. Any users that already exist retain their settings.

Ah, that looks better. While on the subject of account settings:

1) Do XP Home and XP Pro differ on settings retention?

Long ago, I tried limited account rights in XP Home, and found I lost
a huge number of settings that fell back to MS defaults.

Tonight I re-visited this territory, but this time in XP Pro SP2. I
did the same thing; created a new account with admin rights, set up
the settings as I wanted them, then dropped the account from "admin"
to "Limited" rights via Control Panel User Accounts.

This time, all my settings were respected! Was this:
- a change introduced in SP2?
- a difference between XP Pro and XP Home?
- a reflection of "user failure" on my first time round?

2) Can one pre-load settings into the .Default prototype?

It's a drag applying settings interactively by hand, and I don't know
what the .REG equivalents are, for most of them. It's also
unacceptable to have new user accounts starting off with bad settings.

I've read an article on how to set up the Default account (from which
new accounts are created) by copying everything except the registet
from a newly-setup account to this account. But that doesn't help
when the settings I want to apply are stored in the registry.

In particular, I want all new accounts to start off with:
- show .ext, full path, all files
- off-C: locations for all shell folders, with different nesting
- IE's web browser cache to be no greater than 20M
- MS Messenger not dumping incoming malware in the data set

Thanks!

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Our senses are our UI to reality

 

[David Mathog]

Hello David,
You customize the local administrator profile rather than the default user
profile.

Why would a site with real administrators and a separate class
of end users (here, students) want to use the same
profile for the end users as the administrators??? They
do different things, why must their profiles be the same?

SP1:

1. customize the administrator profile
2. customize the default profile DIFFERENTLY
3. sysprep and distribute via ghost
4. new students get default profile

WORK(ED) AS DESIRED: Administrator profile is set
the way that is desired, default profile is
set the way that is desired.

SP2:

1. customize the administrator profile
2. customize the default profile DIFFERENTLY
3. sysprep and distribute via ghost
4. new students get administrator's profile, customized default
profile is overwritten with the administrator's profile.

DOES NOT WORK AS DESIRED: either the Administrator
profile or the default profile is not in the desired
configuration and must be manually repaired post distribution.

Or am I missing something?

Regards,

David Mathog
(e-mail address removed)
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

You customize the local administrator profile rather than the default user
profile. Then all your customizations in the local administrator are moved
over to the default user account.

Are you saying that the settings you apply to the first account
created on the system, will be transferred to subserquently created
accounts? Does this happen on an ongoing basis?

This was a design request, people wnated
this functionality, this was supposed to be enabled in SP1.

I like it, though I'd rather have explicit control over the new
account prototype (and/or possibly a quick way to say "make the
prototype like *this* account).

I don't use or know sysprep; as a small (DSP) system builder, I'm not
sure if I have access to those tools (WinPE is denied me).

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Reality is that which, when you stop believing
in it, does not go away (PKD)

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

Are you saying that the settings you apply to the first account
created on the system, will be transferred to subserquently
created accounts? Does this happen on an ongoing basis?

No, only once. Here is what happens:

The mini-setup that runs after sysprep is run, copies the Administrator
profile over to the Default User profile (the source for future new
accounts). This copy step is new for SP2.

And now it looks like steps being taken to to make the process of
copying the admin profile over the default optional:

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]


Before SP2, you needed to do this copying yourself:

291586 How To Add Customized User Settings When You Run Sysprep
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=291586

305709 HOW TO: Create a Custom Default User Profile
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=305709

319974 How To Create a Custom Default User Profile
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=319974

I don't use or know sysprep; as a small (DSP) system builder, I'm not
sure if I have access to those tools (WinPE is denied me).

Sysprep is a public, free tool, here is the SP2 version:

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Deployment Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...91-AC56-4665-949B-BEDA3080E0F6&displaylang=en


More deployment information here:

Service Pack 2 for Windows XP: Resources for IT Professionals
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/winxpsp2

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 00:35:48 +0200, "Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)"

The mini-setup that runs after sysprep is run, copies the Administrator
profile over to the Default User profile (the source for future new
accounts). This copy step is new for SP2.

Ah, this is all before one goes interactive on the system, thus will
require all changes to be automated as part of sysprep. It's not as
useful if the setup it carries over hasn't been set up yet!

And now it looks like steps being taken to to make the process of
copying the admin profile over the default optional:

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

Where no clear best-for-all-cases applies, options are guud...

Before SP2, you needed to do this copying yourself:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=291586
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=305709
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=319974

Will read and digest, thanks...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/winxpsp2

Ah. I've always bounced off this stuff in the past, but I'll take
another run at it when time permits!

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[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello Torgeir,
Thanks for doing a better job of explaining what was happening than I was
doing.
You have correct, that is exactly what is happening.
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------

Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 00:35:48 +0200
From: "Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)" <[email protected]>
Organization: Gjett to ganger
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
X-Accept-Language: en-us
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Re: sp2 - sysprep overwrites default user
References: <[email protected]>

<[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <[email protected]>

 

[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello,
For question 1) Settings are now retained that weren't before.
I suspect this is at least in part due to the changes when copying over the
default profile. The Default Profile has a number of items that happen
when a new user account is created including a number of items that set up
certain settings the very first time a user logs in.
Since the Administrator account is now being copied over the default user
and more than likely the Administrator Account was initially logged into
once, those one time changes no longer take place. So some of the settings
that you were seeing changed have already be set in the Administrator
account when you logged on for the first time, prior to sysprep being run.
2) Before running sysprep, you can log onto the Local Administrator account
and making all the changes that you want to see in your new user accounts.
Once you have the local administrator account setup the way you want all
the new users to look, then you run setup. The Local Administrator
account's registry is copied over the default user's account registry,
thereby moving all the registry settings that you want changed.
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------

From: "cquirke (MVP Win9x)" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: sp2 - sysprep overwrites default user
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 22:46:45 +0200
Organization: The South African Internet Exchange
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>

<[email protected]>

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

1) Settings are now retained that weren't before.

Ahhhh... "for this relief, MUCH thanks!"

I suspect this is at least in part due to the changes when copying over the
default profile. The Default Profile has a number of items that happen
when a new user account is created including a number of items that set up
certain settings the very first time a user logs in.
Since the Administrator account is now being copied over the default user
and more than likely the Administrator Account was initially logged into
once, those one time changes no longer take place. So some of the settings
that you were seeing changed have already be set in the Administrator
account when you logged on for the first time, prior to sysprep being run.

But I'm not running Sysprep! AFAIK, my first attempt was:
- install XP Home ?SP0 interactively, with 1 account
- interactively make that account nice
- create new account
- interactively make new account nice
- drop rights on new account from admin to limited
-> all settings lost
Current attempt #1:
- install XP Pro SP1a interactively, with 1 account
- interactively make that account nice
- apply SP2
- create new account
- interactively make new account nice
- ** log out, and into original account **
- drop rights on new account from admin to limited
-> all settings retained!
Current attempt #2: Same as #1 except XP Home, not Pro

If it's as I remembered, it either failed the first time because:
- I was using original SP0 version of XP, and it's now fixed
- I dropped rights while still logged in to the account

2) Before running sysprep

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear; I'm not using Sysprep at all!

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A dog will give its life to save yours.
A cat will be annoyed by all the yelling and sirens.

 

[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello,
I am not really clear on the process that you are using so let me ask a
couple of questions.
How are we dropping the settings into the new account?
Are we logging on to the new account before or after making the setting
changes?
If we are logging onto the new account before making the setting changes,
then I would suspect the setting changes should be retained.
If we are not logging onto the new account before moving over all the new
settings changes, then it may be possible that some of the settings could
be reset.

Are we using reg files to move settings over?
Are we copyig over the ntuser.dat file replacing the registry file in the
new account?

Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------

From: "cquirke (MVP Win9x)" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: sp2 - sysprep overwrites default user
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:57:05 +0200
Organization: The South African Internet Exchange
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>

<[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
<[email protected]>

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

I am not really clear on the process that you are using so let me ask a
couple of questions.

How are we dropping the settings into the new account?

In both cases, I applied the settings interactively within the
account. Believe me, I'd dearly prefer to automate this, and build
these settings into the Default prototype! But it's tricky finding
the smallest .REG that will do what a particular interactive setting
does, without any unwanted side-effects.

Are we logging on to the new account before or after making the setting
changes?

In both cases, I created the account (which started off with the usual
unwanted defaults), then logged into it to interactively apply
settings using the OS's own UI, TweakUI, and if need be, Regedit.

In the original case that failed, I dropped the account from admin to
limited via Control Panel, Users - while logged into the account.

In the current cases that pass, I dropped the account from admin to
limited via CP, Users - while logged into the original account.

The difference may be the "user failure" factor on my part, unless
it's improvements to the OS somewhere between RTM and SP1a or SP2.

If we are logging onto the new account before making the setting changes,
then I would suspect the setting changes should be retained.
If we are not logging onto the new account before moving over all the new
settings changes, then it may be possible that some of the settings could
be reset.

Are we using reg files to move settings over?

Not yet, no; that's a process I'd start on only if the "dummy"
approach worked. It will likely be a long road.

Are we copyig over the ntuser.dat file replacing the registry file in the
new account?

No - would that work? I ask, because I'd worry about account-specific
refs embedded in it, that would cross-link to the account it came
from, from all accounts spawned from the modified prototype.

Even if the OS is careful to avoid this (%Labels% are your friend!)
I'd worry that 3rd-partyware might screw up - as it is, 3rd-partyware
is often oblivious to XP's mandatory user profile factor.

For example, I see hard-coded user account path refs in HKLM that
point to the "My Documents" objects from there. I know HKLM is not
within NTUser.dat, but the issue undermines my faith in the process.
That's where I apply settings through the "front door: of OS UI,
TweakUI, apps, and on occasion, Regedit. I use Regedit only when no
corresponding UI is available, e.g. NoDriveTypeAutoRun

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