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Changing Domains

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by wsamis

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I was wondering if anyone had any insight about what I am trying to accomplish. I currently have an NT4 domain and I am re-designing a new network that is all W2K. The current network (NT4) is on a set of machines that are currently in production and the new domain I am creating is on a test network running on newer servers. I have a few clients right now that are on the NT4 domain running W2KPRO and the rest are W98. What I want to do is basically, at the right time, shutdown the NT4 domain, and turn-up the W2K domain. I am avoiding at all costs, a direct O/S upgrade because of the need to use newer/faster hardware. I have moved all the data (including user accounts, etc) on the prod. network to the new W2K domain. My concern is this...I would like to somehow migrate my W2KPRO clients from the NT4 domain to the new W2K domain without losing the profile settings, such as shortcuts, etc. I was able to successfully connect, as a test, one of my W2KPRO clients to the new W2K domain, but all the shortcuts, profile settings, etc. were gone and left with the profile for the old domain. I can see that the profile from the old domain is still there, but it's like a new user has been added to the local profile on the client. Anyone know of an easy way to get around this? Thanks in advance!

9 replies

by mattyre

OK, well when you say move the clients and there profile settings from the old domain to the new domain, Is this what is actually is going on , meaning are there two domain in place as you speak, or are you talking about migrating the user accounts and profiles from the NT server to the W2k Server, if so have you ran DCPROMO and created an active directory on the w2k domain, is so you can go to the "action" tab in AD users and computers and "Move" the clients and there settings will all be moved with them dynamicaly. If you are moving them from domain to another domain then you need to use a utility such as netdom.

by rmt888

When you log on to the new domain a new desktop will be created. To migrate the old profile:

1. Log on to the computer using an Administrator account.

2. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

3. On the User Profiles tab, click the local profile that contains the settings you want, and then click Copy To.

NOTE: The profile usually contains the name of the computer and the name of the user account.

4. In the Copy profile to box, click Browse, and then browse to the folder that contains the profiles. The default folder for profiles is C:\Documents and Settings.

5. Click the domain accounts folder, which by default has the Netbios name of the domain appended to the username. Click OK.

6. Click Change, add the appropriate permissions to the domain user account so that it can use the profile, and then click OK until you return to the desktop.

by forvirg

Actually not so much an answer as another question - I've just gone through this myself and used ADMT, which only successfully migrated about half of my user's computer accounts. For the others, I went to their machines and manually copied the useraccounts over as mentioned in someone's reply to this question.

BUT (BIG BUT!!), some of these people lost all connectivity to Office2000! I have those users back working on the old domain for now (fortunately I kept that NT PDC up and runningand created a trust relationship between the 2 domains). I cannot seem to get Office back working - I've even tried reinstalling. Any ideas anyone??

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