[THIN] OT - freeware desktop profile utility for domain migrations
- From: "Jim Hathaway" <JimH@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:21:43 -0700
Just thought I'd share this with you folks, even if it's not really
terminal services related. :)
I'm currently in the process of planning a medium sized domain migration
(a few thousand seats), and was trying to find an answer to the
excessive amount of time that can go into the process of migrating end
user's desktop local profiles with their workstations when they get
moved into the new domain.
After a great deal of searching I stumbled across this awesome little
utility that makes the process of migrating workstations and user
profiles to new domains a snap.
http://www.forensit.com/Profwiz%5CDefault.htm
In a very simple approach to the problem, this utilty "shares" whatever
local machine or domain profile you specify with whatever domain account
you specify. No file copies, and almost no time needs to be spent at
desktops for this to run in the freeware version. You can get a
corporate version that allows for command line syntax, so the whole
process of migrating your profiles and desktops can be done from a login
script.
The website has a general run down of what the utility does, below is a
more specific breakout of the only issue I've seen with the application
. . It leaves behind a "ghost" profile on a migrated system.
- machine is currently in DomainA, with "userA" logging into it
w/ a local profile.
- You run the utility to allow "UserB" from "DomainB" to access
the profile of "UserA", and you move the machine into "DomainB".
- on next boot, the domain list will default to "DomainA", you
need to change it to "DomainB".
- UserB is able to login to DomainB, and the profile
they get is the profile for "UserA"
- When logged in as an admin to the machine and looking at the
"profile list" that displays by right clicking "my computer" going to
"advanced" and "user profiles" you'll see 2 profiles listed.
- domainA\userA, and domainB\userB.
- If you look under C:\documents and settings\, you only see the
profile directory for "UserA".
Here's the trick with this. The way this utility works is to
"share" the root profile you define, and then to "trick" the OS into
using the old profile with whatever other account you've specified. So
if you "delete" from the profile list either "userA", or "userB" you are
deleting the profile that you just moved, because they both point to the
same location \ profile.
For the amount of time this utility saves, this issue is very minimal,
and could likely be resolved with a follow up script that removes the
refrence to the old domain and user name in the profile list from the
registry.
Hope this helps others out there.
J
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