Windows 8 Roaming Profiles

[ibex333]

I am backing up and restoring user profiles at my work because the server guy is moving everyone to a new domain.

When users log back in after a restore, they complain about rearranged icons on the desktop and a few other minor issues such as getting the Outlook setup screen all over again. This makes me look very bad in the office.

I would like to have an extensive, detailed, hopefully full list of what is NOT being restored when backing up and restoring user profiles. Where can I find something like that?

Thanks very much.

 

[DrGreen2007]

How are you restoring the profiles? are they roaming profiles or local profiles?

If its a new domain, thats a new SID, and gets a new profile, unless your clearing the old profile from the registry, moving to the new domain, then logging the user on and out and then changing the path in the registry back to the old path..?

 

[ibex333]

I am restoring the profiles by simply copying the user's profile folder contents into the one created when he logs in under the new domain. And yes, they are roaming profiles, not local profiles.

 

[DrGreen2007]

Thats the dirty way to 'restore' a profile. (did you reset permissions on the copied files after copying them?)
Id either use a migration tool to move the users profiles from one domain to the other, or try changing the registry path after the user logs in.
new domain account logs in, reboot the pc, log in as another admin account.
Reg path (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList)
That reg section will show the profile paths 'C:\Users\John' (old domain account) and 'C:\Users\John.domainname' (new domain account, .domainname if it was the same user name)

Change the path of the new profile to the old profile (after removing the old one of course) and reset permissions for the new domain account to use all those files.
Since they are roaming profiles though....Im not sure what happens when the new domain user is trying to access the old domain server/files...

Theres tools from forensit.com to

 

[code65536]

%AppData% roams.
%LocalAppData% does not.

Punch the latter into Explorer and you can see what doesn't get roamed. There's a lot--generally, things considered a cache or machine-specific. My guess is that desktop layouts is considered machine-specific (since it's screen resolution-specific). And while I'm not sure about Outlook, I know that Outlook Express (and its WM and WLM successors) stash its data in %LocalAppData% (probably because for Exchange and IMAP systems, the local mail store is basically a cache, and POP users probably aren't going to be roaming their user profiles in the first place).

 

[ibex333]

Thanks very much. I'll look into it. Outlook does get transferred by the way. Along with all the user's settings.