Special thanks to Lynn Johnson for the assist with verifying this method for me. I read it on the Internet, so it MUST have been true – but I wanted some verification anyway.

The Scenario:

For one reason or another, you need to do something to a computer that is going to trash the user profile. Maybe you’re migrating from a workgroup to a domain. Maybe you’re migrating from one domain to another, non-trusting domain. Maybe you’re migrating to a trusted domain, but there is a duplicate account in the new domain that you want to keep. Whatever the reason, you know that when the user logs into the new setup, the user profile is going on holiday.

The old-school way of dealing with this, which has its drawbacks, is to log on as an admin, rename the old profile, log on as the new user once, reboot to unlock the ntuser.dat file, log on as admin again, and copy the contents of the old profile to the new profile folder. This had issues with NTFS permissions on the profile folders, and in many cases the new path was different from the old path, which led to broken shortcuts, registry links (like the wallpaper), file paths in applications (AutoCAD, for example), etc. It was a mess.

Fortunately, there is a better way. I’ve only recently learned of it, and I wish I’d known it sooner. Much sooner.

The Solution:

1. Take note of the existing (old) user profile path.
2. Log into the PC using the new domain account.
3. Take note of the new user profile path.
4. If the user doesn’t have admin rights on the PC, log off and log on as someone who does.
5. Run Regedit and go to HLKM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
6. Expand the above key and you will see a list of SIDs.
7. Look through them, watching the “ProfileImagePath” value until you find the new one that was just created (the new domain user profile).
8. Change the path in the new domain profile to the path of the old profile folder.
9. Adjust the NTFS permissions so that the new user account has FULL CONTROL over the profile path.
10. Reboot and log in as the new domain user. The user profile should be intact.

Happy profiling!

Tags: migrating, Migration, ntuser.dat, path, registry, user profile