Craig Box's journeys, stories and notes...


ProfileTool beta released

ProfileTool screenshotI don't often write code, but I do find it's a good complement to cricket watching. So, in honour of New Zealand playing Sri Lanka in the World Cup semi-final, I'm proud to announce the release of the first public beta of the IT Partners ProfileTool.

ProfileTool lets you take a Windows 2000 or XP user's profile and assign it to a different user, without having to copy any files or perform any manual procedures.

This is a common task for people who are taking a network of PCs that have not been on a domain, and joining them to one; or if you replace a domain controller without keeping security information, which is sometimes done on sites upgrading from a badly installed SBS 2000 installation to a nicely installed SBS 2003 installation.

It also has useful features for deleting a profile off the disk/from the registry, and changing profiles from roaming to local, replicating the features of the User Profiles capplet.

The source is available under the Mozilla Public License, with the implication of "Do what you like with this code, but if you improve it, I'd like your source to come back to me please".

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4 Responses to “ProfileTool beta released”

  1. Dave W says:

    Craig, I've been looking for something just like this. Thanks for posting it!

    Before I use it, I just want to confirm the order of steps. Do we run this tool prior to running the http://server/connectcomputer step or do we do it afterwards?

    Also, during the http://server/connectcomputer step, it asks if we want to copy any settings over for an existing user. Should we do this? I've never actually done it.

    Thanks much!

  2. Craig says:

    If you're using /connectcomputer, it has the ability to take one local profile and make it available for a domain user. It does much the same thing ProfileTool does, so you probably don't need it. If you join the computer manually, or aren't using SBS, you'd want to use this instead of /connectcomputer. Join the domain, log in as the domain administrator, run ProfileTool, and then log into the profile of the user you've moved a profile to.

    If you remove from one domain and join another, /connectcomputer won't see your profile, so you'd want to use this instead.

  3. Todd says:

    I had the need to rebuild a 2003 SBS box with a complete reinstall. The server was renamed the same name, the domain the same, IPs the same, etc.

    when I started to run /connectcomputer on the main workstation, it said to migrate the profile, etc., or lose it. I believe your tool is what I'm looking for.

    a) would you agree?
    b) dl it locally onto the main workstation and run the tool from there, correct?
    c) any other recommendations?

  4. Craig says:

    You need it on every workstation that has a profile you want to migrate. And it will do what you want, yes.

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