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How to move user and passwords to fresh installation??

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mooncat

Technical User
Sep 13, 2002
25
JP
Ok I tried looking on microsoft technet and I can`t be very good at it.I can`t find any info I need.

Basically I pleeded with our office for a second server.It`s a much better machine as the other one is having problems with it`s adaptec card.I installed windows2000 in standalone mode with workgroup.

I set up everything indentically to the other machine.I want to move my users and passwords over to the new machine.

The idea being that this machine will take over the name of the other machine.Basically they`ll be swapped out.


This will give me time to figure out the hardware issues of original machine.Once I get it figured out then I will set it up as our 2nd name server and maybe use AD.

Any Ideas as I want to swap them as soon as I can.

I appreciate anyone helping out.

Thanks guys
 
First thing is that you will have to run dcpromo on your new server and it should automatically replicate the sam over. Next you are going to assume the roles of FSMO if the server your are bringing down is your primary domain controller (FSMO). Look at this website for any questions on FSMO.

 
Thanks

The actual server is not using AD and I plan to take one down before the other goes up as I want to rename the new machine as the old one.

In AD I won`t be able to change the server name.The issue is the primary server is going to need upgrading or repaired so it might be down for a while.

As we host our own domain on it so we need the machine to be named as our primary.

So I`ll have to demote it after sam has replicated and then change the name and promote it again.

Is there any easier or less time consuming way to do it.

Any options appreciated.

Thanks

 
You're talking about taking accounts from a standalone Windows 2000 Server and moving them to another standalone Windows 2000 Server. At least that's how I read your original post. ("I installed windows2000 in standalone mode with workgroup.") So dcpromo won't do anything in terms of replication. That would work if you had a Windows 2000 Server running as a domain controller and you wanted to add a second one.

While I'm not 100 percent sure this is the only way, I suspect you'd need to run dcpromo on the OLD server (making it a DC) first. That would establish a domain and hopefully migrate all the users from local user accounts to domain accounts. Then run dcpromo on the new server, which will replicate all the accounts over.

Of course, if the requirement that the servers be named the same is paramount, none of this will work. You should be able to host the web site on any server, regardless of the machine name. It's just a matter of changing the DNS.

There may be some tools out there that'll make migrating the accounts from old to new server possible, but I can't immediately find any.

Hope this helps.
 
Thanks.Yeah you did read correctly from standalone to standalone.

And the naming is important as it is a registered nameserver to our domain.

So I should be looking for a tool?

Anyway I am still looking everywhere for more info.

Any other help would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
If you can find a tool, that'd probably be best, but I didn't find one when I went looking the other day.

If you really have some time on your hands (unlikely, but just thought I'd throw it out there), you might try messing around with copying the SAM file. That should contain all the usernames and such. You'd have to overwrite the SAM file on the new server. Either way, that would be pretty difficult, since the file's in use all the time. You'd probably have to make a parallel install of Win2k so you could overwrite the SAM file in the desired installation.

How many user accounts are you talking about here? Do you know all the passwords? If worse comes to worse and you can't find a tool, you could try cracking the passwords. Use something like John the Ripper and let it go to town cracking the passwords dumped using something like pwdump3e. (Do some Google searching for both of those if you need to find 'em.) Then you'd be able to recreate all the accounts you need.
 
I never tried this in a workgroup but you can try using clone principle or movetree admt could have done the trick if you were in a domain setting with ad installed
 
Well fortunately we don`t have that many users yet.So basically I just set up the few accounts.

It didn`t take long to setup dozen users.

I appreciate your help guys and thanks for the advice I`ll have a look anyway.

Strange huh it seems like it`s easier to do in AD?

 
It's much easier in AD because you're dealing with a domain. Domains can have multiple domain controllers, so simply setting up another machine as a domain controller would copy all the accounts. Of course, since you're trying to do a 1-for-1 replacement (same machine name, etc.), all that goes out the window!
 
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