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Migrating User Stettings During Network Upgrade

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by etr63

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Hello All,
We are upgrading our network in the following way.

Installation of new physical servers and removal of old physical servers.

Upgrading from Sever 2003 to Server 2008.

Changing the Domain name.

I have approximately 70 Windows XP Pro workstations that will need to be joined to the new domain and I need to make sure that all the user?s settings, Printers, Mapped drives, ect. Remain exactly as they were before the changeover.

I have to do this over the holiday weekend.

What is the fastest and least problematic way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance

4 replies

by larryd4

Using the Windows server Migration tool, you should be able to move over all shares and printers to the new server keeping all share and printer names.

You will want to keep the server name the same also. Since its a new Domain it should not be an issue.

Before you bring down the old domain, you'll have to disjoin the clients from the old network, then put the new server with the new domain name in place and join them to the new AD network.

If you keep the names the same, as far as shares go, you should not have to change anything on the clients other then disjoining and joining.

by etr63

But will all the users settings still be the same once they log into the new Domain? Will they still have their desktop settings, favorites, wallpaper, and any files stored locally, NK2 file from Outlook, and so on. I have used the file and setting transfer wizard when replacing PCs in the past but it takes too long for this scenario I think.

by larryd4

The old user profile will still be their.

But the PC, when the user logs in for the first time on the new domain Will create a new profile for the new network, you then have to bring over their old profile to that new one.

You can do this manually by copying the profile from within the client. But you may want to consider setting them all up with a roaming profile. That way all of their data will be on the old server and when you use the migration tool you should be able to move their profile with it.

Once the migration is done you could move the profile back down to the PC

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