Migrate Windows User Profiles to a new computer
One of the common problems that IT Staff run into is transferring Windows users’ desktop profiles from one computer to another while mainataining all of their customizations, files, settings, favorites, emails, and whatever else. One would think that Microsoft would give IT Pros the tools to transfer this kind of data since they made it so critical with the advent of Windows NT & 2000.
Fortunately there is a tool put out by ForensIT that makes this a relatively trivial task. You can download it here. After you download it, follow these directions to use it to transfer your profiles seamlessly.
- Load the computer fully with the appropriate software, including MS Office if needed.
- Login and create the account of the user that you wish to transfer.
- Either remove and hook up the hard drive from the old computer to the new computer or connect to the computer’s default share (i.e. \\computername\C$)
- After hooking up the drive or connecting to the default share open launch a Windows Explorer window and navigate to “C:\Documents and Settings” folder.
- Copy the Folder for the user that you wish transfer to the new computer.
- On the new computer paste the folder to that same respective folder.
- After copying the folder to the new computer, open up the Windows Control Panel, double-click the System icon, and go to the Advanced tab. Click on the “Settings” button under the User Profiles section.
- Check the “Show Unassigned Profiles” checkbox.
- Choose the folder relating to the folder that you wish to assign, and click assign.
- Type in the username of the user that you wish to transfer.
- Log out and log back in as the migrated user
After following those steps you should have a fully migrated user profile. Keep in mind this dows not migrate programs, Windows is still incapable of doing this.
Enjoy!
Backing up Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 with NTBackup
Recently I deployed my first Exchange 2007 server on Windows 2008 for one of the companies I work with. During the process of deploying the server we found out that the new Windows Server Backup that is included in Windows Server 2008 does not have the capability to backup the Exchange Information Stores in the same fashion that the old NTBackup from Windows 2003 did.
After doing some research I discovered that Microsoft did this by design, and recommends that those who previously using NTBackup to backup Exchange move to their System Center Data Protection Manager product. While this did not make me happy, it clearly did not make the Exchange Admin community jump for joy. There was a big outcry, complaining at Microsoft for taking such core functionality out of Windows. In June of this year, Microsoft relented and promised to deliver an update to Windows Server Backup to add this functionality back in. It is now November, and it has not happened yet.
In the mad scramble to find an alternative way to make a simple backup of the Exchange Info Stores I stumbled upon a post on the Exchange Team Blog, by a poster named “Phil Carter” that details a method of using the old NTBackup from Windows Server 2003 on Server 2008 without a hitch. This sounded too good to be true, it could not possibly work, why would Microsoft not simply distribute the old backup utility to solve this problem. However, after considering the alternatives of buying and expensive 3rd party backup utility, or deploying DPM (and the required, dedicated Windows server to go with it) I decided to give it a go.
Here is what I did:
1) Load up a Windows 2003 x64 system. The x64 part is important, as you should be running Exchange on a x64 platform (unless you are using an Itanium), and you must use matching binaries for this. I used a Virtual Machine for this.
2) Copy the ntbackup.exe, ntmsapi.dll, and vssapi.dll from C:\windows\system32 into a new folder.
3) Burn the new folder you created containing the copied files to a CD, or copy it to USB drive. You can also copy it over the network to your Windows 2008/Exchange 2007 Server to skip the next step.
4) Copy the folder from the CD or USB drive to your Windows 2008/Exchange2007 server.
5) Launch Ntbackup.exe. Select the Information Stores as you would normally under NTBackup and start your backup.
After it completes you should have a quick and easy Exchange 2007 Backup on Windows 2008. This method even purges your transaction logs properly. I have even verified this method works properly, by attempting to restore from the backup. It works without a hitch.
This method is great for small shops that happen to be running Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008, and do not have the need or resources for yet another Windows server just to run backups as DPM requires. For larger shops, I actually do recommend DPM over other 3rd party tools, as its method of doing replication works really well.
Don’t bet on a WebKit-based Microsoft Browser
The Tech blogs are all a buzz this morning with a revelation that Microsoft may be considering adopting WebKit to use as the rendering engine in Internet Explorer. While I hate to rain on their parade, this will not happen, at least any time soon. Considering that Microsoft is in the process of preparing to release IE 8 within the next year or so, and the release cycle of Internet Explorer has been far and few between it will likely be years off before we see another release of IE.
In addition to the long release cycle, Microsoft has invest significant amounts of money and time into .NET and its tight integration with IE, which is notorious for not working with or rendering well with other browser rendering engines. Even if Microsoft went entirely AJAX for all of their web-based products, there is massive amounts of code from other developers out there that are tailored to run on IE. Microsoft would even have to rework many of their core products to use another rendering engine, an example is Outlook Web Access. OWA is puedo AJAX-based, but it still maintains separate versions for IE and other browsers, not to mention that many of the MMC snapins rely on IE for rendering key components. Would they have to rework these too? Finally, could you imagine Microsoft working on an open source code base that they share with not only the general public, but Apple, and Google?
What I could see Microsoft doing in the short term to test the waters is releasing an unofficial addon that allows you to manually choose to render a page in WebKit. This is much like the IE 8 betas have for rendering as if it were IE7. This would allow them to gauge the demand, as well as test functionality with a new engine, without having to rework, much of their core products. If this were to happen I could see it being released much like the PowerTools have always been released, without official support.
Howto: VMWare Disk Mount Utility
VMWare quite possibly makes some of the greatest software products in the world. They practically invented the virtualization market, and they are still the market leaders. This is evidenced by the their add on product for their server and workstation product lines called the Disk Mount Utility (DMU).
The DMU allows you to take the .vmdk or hard drive files that are used for your virtual machines and mount and access them in the same way you would a USB Thumb Drive to access the files located on the virtual drive. One might ask, “Why would you want to do such a thing?” the answer is simple, what if you just need the files on the VM not the whole VM, do you really want to have to fire up the VM, waste time and resources only to have to copy files between a computer and the VM? This method makes this process much more straight forward. This works well when used in conjunction with VMWare Converter. If you need more info on Converter, see the VMWare site or my presentation on it.
On to the Howto:
1) Get the Disk Mount Utility software from VMWare.
2) Install the software.
3) Launch a command prompt. Start > Run and type CMD.
4) Change your working directory to the Install Directory by typing:
cd “\Program Files\VMware\VMware DiskMount Utility”
5) Next you will run the mount program using the format of vmware-mount <the drive letter you wish to mount it to> <the full path to the target virtual disk>
Example:
vmware-mount z: “f:\My Virtual Machines\Windows XP Server 2003\Windows Server 2003 Professional.vmdk”
Thats it, within a few seconds you should see the drive in the My Computer window. When you are done with the virtual drive simply type the following to dismount it:
vmware-mount /d z:
If you need further help or want to explore some of the other options available type the following:
vmware-mount/?
It is also of importance that there are some GUIs out there for this to simplify the process, but they usually are fairly cumbersome.
