Profile Backup & Restore

[Gerry]

Soon we will be re-imaging all the staff PC's, but first we will need to backup their local profiles. We use MS's Backup tool for that. The only problem is that to restore we need the person to log-in first on their freshly imaged PC. If they don't, XP creates a new profile for them called "username.domain".

Is there a way around this?

Preferably we want to be able to do it without the user being available as they will be "working" from home soon... I though just tweaking the permissions/ownership for the restored profile folder would work, but sadly, it doesn't.

[plexer]

Why do they have local profiles on the pc's?

Ben

[Gerry]

Why do they have local profiles on the pc's?

Ben

It's how it's been done here for a while-before I started working for them. Thankfully, we'll be moving staff documents and settings over to a network storage device, but there's been a problem with the hardware we bought and it probably won't be up and running until the end of the summer hols.

[srochford]

It's messy but it's not impossible.

if you look in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList you'll find a list of profiles; export this key to a text file.

Do the same thing at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileGUID

Now open these two files in notepad and keep the bit from the first file which is relevant to the account(s) you want and the same from the second file (they're linked by the SID - you'll find it easier to read the profile path when it's in regedit). You should end up with something looking like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileGuid\{12033caf-6bb6-4c5d-b5d2-ff37007e7acb}]
"SidString"="S-1-5-21-243037206-41955558-561332275-210049"


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-243037206-41955558-561332275-210049]
"ProfileImagePath"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,44,00,72,\
  00,69,00,76,00,65,00,25,00,5c,00,44,00,6f,00,63,00,75,00,6d,00,65,00,6e,00,\
  74,00,73,00,20,00,61,00,6e,00,64,00,20,00,53,00,65,00,74,00,74,00,69,00,6e,\
  00,67,00,73,00,5c,00,6a,00,72,00,31,00,30,00,37,00,00,00
"Sid"=hex:01,05,00,00,00,00,00,05,15,00,00,00,16,74,7c,0e,e6,30,80,02,33,40,75,\
  21,81,34,03,00
"Flags"=dword:00000000
"State"=dword:00000014
"CentralProfile"="\\\\icfs18.cc.ic.ac.uk\\jr107prof\\jr107.pds"
"ProfileLoadTimeLow"=dword:f6e967de
"ProfileLoadTimeHigh"=dword:01c9eb66
"Guid"="{12033caf-6bb6-4c5d-b5d2-ff37007e7acb}"
"RefCount"=dword:00000001
"RunLogonScriptSync"=dword:00000001

Now save that safely for the machine. When you restore the profiles (making sure you restore permissions), import this registry file. when the user logs on they will magically get their original profile.

(What you're doing is putting in the stuff which says which user gets which profile; I've never worked out why you need the profileguid bit but it doesn't seem to work if you leave it out)

[Gerry]

Will try this out Monday, thanks.

[Gerry]

Yup, works a treat thanks.

[srochford]

Excellent :-)

Now when you get your new hardware up and running you can move to documents, desktop and appdata being redirected to that storage. Once that's done, your profile sizes will be quite small and you can introduce roaming profiles. Once that's done users can just move to a new machine (or a reimaged machine) and everything will follow them and life will be nice and easy :-)