Rename User Profile?

[deliamay]

I was having trouble seeing a shared printer from another PC and decided to take the PC with the printer out of the domain and then add it back again. Unfortunately when i log on again i have lost the user profile for user let's call him BILL, ie desktop, outlook express email account, links etc. (the profiles are on the PC not the server). The old profile is still there under documents and settings under BILL but when i log on now it goes to a folder called BILL.domainname
Could someone please advise me of the quickest way to restore the profile. Do i have to copy everything over, import the email (it's very large) or is there a way of simply renaming or pointing to the old profile.
Thanks in anticipation
Delia

 

[captaincrunch00]

Log in as someone other than Bill.

Rename the Bill folder to Bill.DOMAINNAME after you've renamed the current Bill.DOMAINNAME to Bill.DOMAINNAME.OLD or something.

Log back in as Bill.

 

[deliamay]

Thanks Captain Crunch. I tried exactly what you said then logged on again as BILL, the lost profile didn't appear and now i find again a profile named simply BILL ! So i now have BILL.domainname (with the correct profile inside), BILL.domainname.old and BILL, the user "Bill" presumeably now logging into this new BILL profile. Help !!!
Delia

 

[PappaD]

Deliamay,

You could just try copying the contents (either all or just those you require - i.e. .pst files, links etc) of BILL.domainname to BILL

Make sure you are logged in as admin to do it, and have "all files" view enabled.

If you do that, log in as Bill and it again creates a new profile, it is likely there is some corruption in the original profile. Good luck!

Cheers,

 

[deliamay]

Thankyou for your help.
I suspect the problem is a security one. I wasn't very clear in my first post - although the profiles are on the PC, they are in fact network (domain) passwords not local ones.
Delia

 

[PappaD]

Delia,

If the machine has been successfully rejoined to the domain, and you are logging "BILL" on with his domain account - to the domain rather than the local PC (which I assume you must be as your first post mentioned the creation of a profile "BILL.domainname") I cant see that permissions could be the source of the problem - That profile is associated with the domain account, and should have set permissions accordingly.

Assuming you have access to the domain admin account, you could check this anyway, and overwrite the permissions on the folder. As a minimum, you should have full permissions to the profile folder for SYSTEM and BILL (domain account). If in doubt, go to advanced and reset all the permissions on the child objects.

Did you try copying the contents of the "good" profile into the one the local machine has created for you at logon?
Did that not work - i.e. did the machine then create another profile?

Cheers,

 

[deliamay]

Oh dear.
I copied all of the contents of the profile with all the stuff in it into the profile folder that BILL logs on to, and though i got the desktop back, various programs don't work, some keyboard character positions have changed and the outlook express account doesn't open (problem of identities) - i think the siuation is worse than before as now i'm stuck with this weird profile! What's more, i still can't see the printer from other PCs.
I'm thinking at this point to maybe create a new local profile for this user and try to copy just data over, create a new email account and import the data (if I can still find it.)
Thanks for all help in any case.
Delia

 

[wolluf]

Delia - you really need to use the copyto feature of system properties to copy profile over another - but that probably wouldn't be available on the machine as it no longer associates the old profile with an account, so likley wouldn't appear on list of profiles to copy from.

There is another way - which usually works (your copy data, import etc should work fine) - you could copy the old profile to the server, then point the account at it as a roaming profile. Remove any spurious biil profiles on the machine, then logon as bill. It should pick up the roaming profile & create local one from it. If it works ok, just remove the roaming profile 'pointer' from the account in AD on the server, and it should continue just using the local one.

 

[deliamay]

In fact, in the list of profiles there are some account unknown profiles. I tried the copy to option in cp\system\advanced\user profiles but it gave the same strange result of changing the font on the start button and the keyboard ! and not all the programs working properly.
What i would really like to do in order to preserve the correct settings is to point my account to it's original profile.
I'll keep trying. Thanks for help
Delia

 

[deliamay]

Thankyou to all who have offered me help on my profile problem. In the end I had to get the email back up and running immediately so I recreated the account in the new profile and managed to import the huge files back in. I am now trying to figure out how to import the address book (which was never exported in the first place - i can find no trace of .wab files).
Please excuse my ignorance of profiles - i really need to study this subject.
Delia

 

[deliamay]

ps. The comforting thing about this forum is seeing that you are not alone and that plenty of other people have similar (and dissimilar) problems.
The recent new thread "Computers rename themselves" makes me smile (in sympathy).
Delia

 

[wolluf]

If user was using outlook express, address book should be here:-

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book

and should be called username.wab

(where username is original profile name).

But I must admit I've seen them go missing!

That option I described to temporarily use a roaming profile to get the old local profile back on local machine can work if the profile is not corrupt.

 

[deliamay]

Your roaming profile idea really sounds like a good one but as i'd never used them before and had the boss standing over me wanting to see his email messages, i went for the thing i knew would work. I will have a look at rp's when i get a little more time.
I think .wab files are hidden which is why they didn't come up during the search - in a little while i'll have another look for that missing address book.
Thanks again, Delia