I am creating a test server to test our disaster recovery process. Therefore, we tried to replicate the environment (to an extent) by having 1 frontend and 1 sql machine (same structure as Live environment, but test machines are 2 virtual machines) the Test environment Front end is on - Windows server 2008/WSS 3.0 SP2 and backend SQL server 2008 while live is on Windows server 2003/WSS 3.0 SP1 ; also we kept the domain name on test server exactly the same as on Live. We thought since domains are same so there won’t be any issues if we manually create the users in Test AD with the same permissions as on Live AD. But, when restored the application (using stsadm) it appeared that the Test server is not recognizing those accounts manually created in the test server AD. Some one said that there is a hidden unique id associated to each user and when you manually creates a user it got change may be that's why it’s causing issues. He also suggested that migrating the users through ADMT v3.1 tool by Microsoft, but I am still trying to understand ADMT nothing done yet except installed it on test environment. Also, I DON’T want to install any thing on live server as far as it’s totally inevitable. Can you suggest any solution how should I go about step by step doing the migration of all the objects from source AD to Target AD without causing any changes to Source AD (Live environment).There is NO physical or vpn connection between the Source and target domains (Live and Test environments) , they are on completely seperate domains.1 person needs an answerI do too

You've posted in a consumer level/end-user forum for the Windows XP operating system. You need to post your question in the appropriate TechNet forum where you'll get the attention of other sysadmins and AD experts.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/categories/MS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!