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Migrating user accounts

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by win

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I have NT 4.0 as PDC and BDC. The PDC is HP server. I have a new Dell server to replace the HP server. It comes with W2K pre-loaded. How can move my users and groups from old PDC to my new Dell server?

To make it complicated, my BDC is also my mail server.

5 replies

by bcross

You will use the ADMT (Active Directory Migration Tool) to do this. If you e-mail me and ask nicely, I'll send you an entire LONG technical document FULL of pictures and everything about exactly how to do it. Print it and you'll be all good to go.

by tony.colgrove

You have a couple of options, depending on what you want to do. If you truely want to "migrate your users" to Windows 2000 and Active Directory, you can run dcpromo on you Win2K box to create your new AD forest. You can then use the ADMT to "clone" your users into Active Directory. This gives the Win2K version of the user two SID's, one for AD and a copy of the NT4 SID (its called SID history). This allows the user to log into Win2K and still access all resources on NT4.
If you want to "Upgrade" your NT4 domain to Active Directory, you will need to start with a clean install of NT4 as a BDC on the DELL server. Then premote it to the PDC. Now you can upgrade to Win2k. After the OS upgrade, dcpromo will kick off to upgrade your NT SAM to Active Directory. This is a nice way to go if you are happy with the structure of your NT4 domain, and user accounts. This will keep you from touching the desktop to change domain names, and you won't have to worry about password issues. The ADMT doesnt migrate passwords.
So consider the direction you want to go. The upgrade process has less affect on end users, but a migration allows you to start clean on Win2K.

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