Hi, folks! A question that I don't doubt sounds enormously stupid but at the same time I want to figure out. The scenario to date: The company I work for has multiple AD servers, mixed between 2003 and 2008. (Eventually we'll move them all over to 2008 but that's irrelevant at the moment.) We keep user accounts on AD, but for the most part, their profiles are stored locally, since up until now they've had their own computers. Naturally things are a bit of a pain when it comes to moving a user from one system to another, so we've decided to migrate people to roaming profiles, coupled with GPO-mandated folder redirection. Until now, I've been playing around with a couple of test accounts freshly created, which seemed to work all right in terms of all the directories being created and populated, etc., but now I have to deal with the same thing for users whose accounts have been around for years. So yesterday EOD, I copied the users' local profiles from their systems to a backup area (just in case things went boom), changed the profile path to the USV server, and applied the group policies for folder redirection. All this was followed by a round of fervent prayer that things haven't exploded when I walk into the office this morning. They didn't. Then again, seeing as only some of the directories created as a result of the group policy were created (and populated with files also requested by said group policy), I'm assuming that the profiles aren't roaming yet, either. Doing a search, I see that people talk about converting local profiles to roaming profiles via USMT. (I'm assuming "local" profiles also includes locally-created domain profiles.) Microsoft's own documentation mostly looks at migration scenarios involving, if I'm reading this correctly, client-to-client profile transfer. How would this change if we want to move the accounts from a client to a server, straight up? Also, a lot of documentation refers to USMT 3.2. A scan of my previous threads posted will probably tip you off that I can be a bit of a PEBKAC, mired with occasional bouts of absent-mindedness. If anyone can provide some of the more obvious pointers in terms of handling this migration, it'd be greatly appreciated. And just before I hit the "Submit" button, naturally, one of the users has basically stated that his local profile settings haven't been copied to the roaming profile, although thankfully the folder redirection appears to have worked. Is it still possible to get his old profile settings (wallpaper, Office settings, etc.) back?

Hi, I don't know what PEBKAC is, maybe you can fill me in :) Reading through your post, and without trying too hard to visualise every step you have taken, it seems that you have almost achieved what you set out to do. By my read, the only things missing are the profile-specific settings. The documents have been correctly redirected, etc. This is just a flyer, but instead of USMT, have you considered Windows Easy Transfer? For a small number of machines, this utility works incredibly well.If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer".

PEBKAC is a term I picked up in my helpdesk days, short for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair." In my case, it's usually some sort of stupidly glaring oversight on my end that I neglect which causes problems, which is why I ask for some of the more hand-holding pointers. Will Windows Easy Transfer be okay for moving stuff over to a specific profile server? EDIT: Also, it'd be VERY NICE to be able to transfer over the users' profile settings. To be sure, it's not business-critical, but for the end-user's sake, it'd be wonderful if we can take the settings they had on their "home" machines and move them over to the profile server.

Will Windows Easy Transfer be okay for moving stuff over to a specific profile server? EDIT: Also, it'd be VERY NICE to be able to transfer over the users' profile settings. To be sure, it's not business-critical, but for the end-user's sake, it'd be wonderful if we can take the settings they had on their "home" machines and move them over to the profile server. To answer the first question, I don't know, I haven't tried it. What I had in mind was the following: 1. Log onto the old user profile (the one who's setting's you want to keep), and run WET as the 'old machine' 2. Log onto the new user profile and run WET as the 'new machine' As you can see, this would be very time-consuming for lots of users, but the results are outstanding. I'm guessing here, but I think that if the new user profiles have re-directed documents folders, that WET will automatically store them on the server. I would imagine the same goes for the profile, but as I say, I haven't tried it. Maybe experiment on one machine (if this is a feasable option).If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer".

Sorry for the late reply, but things got sidetracked on my end by something completely irrelevant to the discussion but hampered my ability to make headway here. So let me get this straight. In my case, your applied directions would more or less be: Run WET as user X, select 'old machine.' Log out, assign roaming profile to user X Log back in as user X, now with roaming profile. Run wet, select 'new machine.' That sound about right?

That sounds right to me. But I haven't tried it with roaming profiles. Try this on a test machine first. Note, I didn't propose my reply as THE answer, it was simply a suggestion. Give it a try, and let us know if it suits your needs. Note, also, that you are welcome to unmark this question as 'Answered' if it doesn't help you. Come back to us.

So I tried this out on a test machine in the production domain with a test account. Obviously, I created the test account first. A domain account with absolutely nothing assigned to it--no groups, no GPOs, nothing. I then tweaked a bunch of Windows settings, including wallpaper, Outlook display preferences (reading pane, minimizing navigation, etc.), default Word font, IE8 home page, and such. From there, I ran WET. First hiccup: it demanded a local administrator account. After running as an admin, I saw WET's interface and pretty much determined that WET was designed for the backup and restoration of local profiles. I backed up the profile anyway, just in case. I then dropped the profile into a production OU with a Folder Redirection GPO applied to it, as well as the workstation it was on into a production OU with an Offline Files GPO applied to it. (Of course, I waited a few minutes, logged out, and restarted the workstation.) In doing so, my wallpaper disappeared, but otherwise everything else seemed okay. (This complaint showed up a couple of times.) Checking the profile showed that everything seemed to be working okay and all parameters functioning, and so I re-assigned the wallpaper, logged out, and logged back in. Still good. I then assigned a roaming profile directory to the account, logged out, restarted the workstation, and waited a few minutes before logging in. I then witnessed the miracle of the spawning and population of a .V2 directory, which I would later consider validation that the roaming profile was now active. Logging in, I checked the settings, which all seemed to be okay, including the wallpaper (because that's what the end-users really care about). I then tried it on another machine, on which everything, including wallpaper, worked successfully. I'm guessing that USMT isn't even really needed, provided users log into their "home workstations" when they log onto their roaming profiles for the first time (or three). I must have Chicken Littled the user's situation from my first post (where the user said his local settings weren't copied onto the roaming profile) because of the lack of background--since we were beginning to experience some insanity at that point (irrelevant to the topic but the reason I disappeared from this thread for so long), I probably assumed Worst Case Scenario and thought none of it worked. Thanks for your assistance, Bigteddy, and while I may never apply WET in this environment, it's good to know for future home reference. If anyone else has any stories about migrating to roaming profiles, please feel free to post to this thread!

As long as the wallpaper doesn't change, that's the most important thing!

Exactly! The roaming profiles went live with the second first batch of users this morning to smashing success. They had their wallpaper and everything! One thing to note is to ensure that they haven't already established a local profile on any of the other systems first--that can throw things off, because it prioritizes the local profile (unless there's a Group Policy that overrides this?). I'd neglected to do this before, as I had asked two of the guinea pigs to swap workstations to test Folder Redirection before I added Roaming Profiles to the mix (I wouldn't doubt they had logged into each others' workstations even before that for various reasons, which may have even thrown off some of the things I wanted to test with FR, like Roaming AppData). So when I first tested it out, not only did the wallpaper not appear, but other things like Outlook and IE8 settings and templates and task bar shortcuts failed to manifest as well. A purging of locally cached profiles (administrator excepted) cleaned that right up. We'll probably be virtualizing more user states and assigning the Offline Files to user workstations throughout the month.

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