How to join domain and still maintain settings from unjoined user profile?
I have some Vista x64 workstatons configured for software development that have never been joined to our AD domain. The users have lots of custom settings in their local unjoined user profiles that they want to see maintained after the join. How do I do this? Their profiles are large (just under 1GB in some cases) full of source code, etc.
- Join them to the domain
- Login with their domain credentials, logout
- Login as local administrator (not the old account, not the new one, a 3rd local admin)
- Right click My Computer and select properties
- Select advanced system settings
- Go to the Advanced tab
- Click settings under user profiles
- Select their old profile you want and click Copy to
- Browse to the location of their new profile and overwrite it
If the Copy button is grayed out then reboot and repeat steps 2-9.
Join the computer to the domain. Log in via the local admin account or a new domain account.
Under Control panel, System Properties, Advanced Settings Tab click the Settings button in the User Profiles section.
Select the LOCAL profile ( <MachineName>\<account>) and click Copy To - enter the path (
c:\Users\NewDomain.Account) and use the Permited to Use Change button to link it to the domain account.
Or just use the included easytransfer utility to copy files over. Takes a little more time than remapping the profiles as suggested above, but its way cleaner (imho).
Actually, I have one slightly different suggestion for you, shoek.
If you visit this URL, http://www.forensit.com/downloads.html you'll see a link for User Profile Wizard 3.0.
You can use this FREE tool on the machine to perform two tasks in one swift motion.
1. You can add the machine to the domain, AND
2. You can copy the users' LOCAL profile over to their DOMAIN profile, allowing them to sign into their new DOMAIN profile, and retain all the settings and customizations from their local profile.
It'll even add the new DOMAIN profile to the LOCAL Administrators group for you!