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Solve : Backing up User Profiles without Server? |
| Answer» <html><body><p>This is for 2 computers, one of which is Windows XP Home SP3 32-bit and the other is Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit for a small office with multiple users. Prior to me digging into this mess there were 2 computers that were treated as home computers, and there would be multiple users all using the same logon and some people installing junk that others didnt want and both systems were always run as admin. This made for major problems with no accountability as to who deleted someones files or installed something that was not something that should be on business computers!!!<br/><br/>I came along and gave myself an admin account for admin duties only, a user account for myself, and lowered the privileges of the main account that all had been using prior to user level. The Windows XP Home SP3 system had not been rebuilt since it was <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/put-11868" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about PUT">PUT</a> into operation in 2006 and had been infected/unifected multiple times in the past. I donated a 80GB <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/hdd-479551" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about HDD">HDD</a> to them and installed Windows XP Home SP3 clean to this system and <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/set-11758" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about SET">SET</a> up admin account with just me with password and user accounts for myself and all other users.<br/><br/>On the Windows 7 system it was fairly new and I was amazed it didnt get hit with malware or a virus yet, so I immediately changed the account they had been using to user level privileges after first creating an admin account for myself. I then created the same user names on this system that are also on the XP computer.<br/><br/>Both computers are connected to a 500GB NAS and there are folders mapped as drive letters for the users of U: for user date ( private ) and Z: for shared data among all users.<br/><br/>Right now I am trying to come up with a way to back up the user profiles so that if one of these systems died, I would be able to rebuild the system and copy the profiles back without having to spend most of a day creating all the profiles all over again from scratch as well as most importantly, people who save bookmarks or favorites depending on browser they are using would then be backed up and so the bookmarks and favorites would not be lost.<br/><br/>On the Windows XP system, I believe that if I <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/ran-618623" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about RAN">RAN</a> a script that rebooted the system and then logged onto an admin level account that I would then be able to copy the user profiles over to the NAS. Windows XP I know Caches profiles so if you log off of a profile and then go into an admin account, it will not allow you to copy the user account profile because it will give you file in use errors, so a reboot dumps the cached profiles.<br/><br/>I haven't attempted this yet on the Windows 7 system, but I assume that the profiles are cached if they were accessed since start up of the computer, so I would have to do the same?<br/><br/>Figured I'd post this here in case there is a better method of safe keep of user profiles without implementing a costly Windows Server and upgrading these 2 systems from HOME OS to PRO versions. If there was a Free Linux method to implement, I do have a computer that I can donate to them to act as a server, but I have never heard of any Linux based servers that can manage Windows User Accounts etc. I have a feeling that I am stuck with backing up the profiles through a batch script to the NAS from each of the computers.<br/><br/>Also its too bad that one computer can not be set to allow profiles to roam to the other, because then I'd have 1 profile for each user vs 1 profile for each computer for each user making 2x as many profiles.<br/><br/>Also we have an issue where the <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/28-242614" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about 28">28</a> people all have their own browser preferences in which some like IE and wont use others, and some use only Chrome, and some use only Firefox like myself, and a few wanted Opra. And the boss is allowing all these browsers to be installed on both systems so that the users can select the browser of choice.<br/><br/>Interested in Suggestions and/or Better Solutions to this... Short answer. No, you can't do that.<br/>The user profile can be save, but it does not have all stuff needed to created the profile again.<br/>If a user profile gets messed up and you want to recover just that one profile from a file set, you don't have enough stuff to automatically recover the user profile fully. Or, in other words, some stuff is not saved in a file set associated with the user. The procedure is like this:<br/>A. create a brand new virgin user accountant.<br/>B. copy the files of the dead user to the new living user.<br/>This is documented in the MS knowledge base :"Repair corrupted user profile."<br/>It would also apply to restoring a user from the earlier file set.<br/><br/><a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7">http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7</a><br/>Windows XP is similar to that. But different.<br/><br/></p></body></html> | |