How to Move/Copy user local profiles from from one W2k3 server to another w2K3
Paul
I am moving users from one Windows Server 2003 Terminal
Server to a new Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server. The
user profiles are on the old Windows 2003 Server in the
documents and settings folder (local profile). I want to
move.copy the users to the (local profile) same folder name documents and
settings on the new Windows Server 2003. I would like to
avoid having to log on as the 80 users on the new server
before copying the profiles from the old server to the
new one. IE after the profiles are moved I would like
the users to log on using that profile and not creating
a new on. The applications are the same on both servers
except on the new one I installed Office xp and upgraded it to Office 2003.
I would like
avoid having to go to roaming profiles and then changing it back to local.
I would greatly appreciate any ideas to keep
this migration simple and efficient.
Regards,
Paul
Patrick Rouse
when you implement the new server you don't have to worry about issues with
profiles. I've been using roaming profiles on TS for years w/o any big
problems. I can add another Citrix Server to my farm w/o having to even
consider profile problems.
--
Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://www.workthin.com
Goku 316
profiles and avoid the 3 hours of hell we had.
However if it is not much users then give this a good reading before trying.
In the registry at this key below contains the list of all your user profiles.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
In that reg key has the sid ids for all your users. Look at each subkey and
you will see what I mean.
(there is a key in each subkey called ProfileImagePath this should help you
out...)
Copy each of these keys by exporting them to a “.reg” file and then
importing them to the new server....
Then copy the actual user profile folder to the new server’s document and
settings folder.
Be very careful and copy only the users you want. Don’t just Rigt click on
the ProfileList key and export everything from the old server. Doing this
will also export the System user id as well as some other ids that are
dependent only on that machine. Corrupting the new server’s id can slow down
the users’ logon time and induce event Id 1000. Office will even crash.
The only easy cure is to apply windows updates a few of them to help repair
some of the damage.
I did this for 165 terminal users.
You have more thing to do.
You should do an xcopy command to copy all the NTFS settings from the old
server’s document and settings to the new one. After all you only want the
Administrator, Creator Owner and the actual user to have access to their own
user profile folder.
If xcopy fails I used the xcacls.vbs file from Microsoft and I wrote a batch
file to xcopy and apply the NTFS security.
Test this unusual approach for one user and see what happens.
My boss did not like configuring roaming profiles even though this would be
of tremendous help
Hope this help and again test test test before anything else.
--
Goku 316
Paul
Thank you very much for this info. I had wondered about the exporting
and importing
of the user sids but didn't know if it would work. I could completely
understand for the
reasons why that you gave that one doesn't do all of the sids. This is
client only had 2 servers
before adding a new one. IE one is a DC and the other one is a TS being
retired to be used
for archiving purposes. I have used robocopy to copy files from one server
to another
and it works great. The limited number of servers that they have causes me
not to want to have
user settins in two places. I fully agree that if one had 2 or more
TS/Citris servers roaming profiles
would be the way to go. I got Fathers Day stuff to do and will try some
testing tonight.
Thanks very much Patrick and Goku 316 for your imput.
Paul
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