NT SERVER 4.0 User and Global Accounts In User Manager

[DCL]

I am installing a new Hard Drive on NT Server 4.0 system. There was nothing wrong with the current hard drive and it’s OS, I am just installing a larger drive.
I have Already Partitioned, Formatted and Installed the OS.
I will now install applications and user data to the appropriate partitions.
I don’t want to have to recreate all the user accounts, so my question is this
1) Is there an easy way to copy over the user account info from User Manager?
2) Do I need a particular file and or registry entry?

And please when you respond don’t talk about using ghosting utilities. I prefer to install the old fashion way.

 

[FairbanksF]

A really easy way would have been a BDC. Or a ghosting utility. P

 

[jrini]

The NT Server Resource Kit has a utility, "ADDUSERS", that will ouput/input a user list. I think that the only thing it does not do is maintain the user's password. An Administrator will have to manually set up passwords.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Add-users assumes that you are building a whole new domain. If you want to preserve the same domain environment, you will want to run 'rdisk -s' from the command-line to make sure that a floppy and file backup exists of the accounts database and then make a full backup of the system. Go ahead and install a new domain with the same name, but once the system is up, boot from floppies and do an emergency repair. Use the Emergency Repair disk that you created to replace the registry with the one you have on the disk. This will change you back to your former domain and will restore all your users at the same time.

Another even better and simpler solution would be to create a temporary Backup Domain Controller. This is what they are for. Install NT4 Server on a junk system as a BDC, then promote it to be the PDC. Go ahead and do the rebuild on your other system and install it as a BDC. Once it is online, promote it back to being the PDC. Then you can junk the temp BDC (if you don't want to have a backup, that is...) and you are running with all your users and groups and a new drive.

ShackDaddy