Joining an existing workgoup account to a domain

[PAffiliates]

Greetings,

I am wondering how to join a user that is part of a workgroup and has a local user account to a domain without reinstalling all the software that is currently installed for the local account. Is this possible? It always rebuilds the desktop for the new user, but I want to keep everything the same except that the system will now be a part of the domain. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

PAffiliates

 

[58sniper]

Add the machine to the domain, and have the user login with their domain account. Reboot the machine, login with either a local admin or domain admin account. Copy the contents of the local profile folder to the domain profile folder, and reset the NTFS rights for the domain account. Problem solved.

Pat Richard MVP

 

[PAffiliates]

58sniper,

Thank you for your prompt response. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out. I plan on trying this out over the weekend. I did have one question about your comment regarding resetting the NTFS permissions for the domain account...Could you possibly explain what you mean by this (what MMC, what NTFS permissions)? Once again, your help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Patrick

 

[PAffiliates]

58sniper,

I copied the profiles, and it is working just fine. Not sure what I need to do permission-wise, but everything seems to be in order by just copying one profile to the other. Thank you for taking the time to help me out!!! I really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Patrick

 

[58sniper]

Right click on the new profile folder, and click Properties. Go to the Security tab, assign full control to the new user account, click the Advanced button, check the bottom check box, and let it rip. This will assign full control rights to the files in the profile. If it's working fine for you now, it sounds like you're logging on with a user account that's a local admin (yikes). Reset the permissions to avoid problems.

Pat Richard MVP

Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

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