XP Local User Profiles in a domain environment

[mharris357]

Can someone explain to me why XP sometimes creates a duplicate XP profile--for example c:\documents and settings\user.domain, when all the other users that have domain accounts have profiles reflected as c:\documents and settings\user ????? This bugs the %!#$ out of me. I have no proof, but I think it might be an indication that a Domain Controller could not be contacted.-----Any takers? Any helpful information would be greatly appreciated.

[snowmonkey]

That is not sometimes.... it is "all the time", how would you try to distinguish the difference between a domain profile and local profile...... Domain profile is like this "username.domainname" where as local profile is known only by the user name.

Please note that your domain profile only get created when your have an actual domain controller and domain account or else you would not be able to create a domain profile.

What exactly are you trying to do ?


Cheers

[mharris357]

not so my friend because @ the site that I work at, I have witnessed this with my own two eyes-- all the AD accounts logged into every machine on the AD domain have the naming convention residing @ c:\documents and settings\name............ in that fashion and this takes place when a user logs into a machine for the first time on any particular machine AND what I'm trying to convey to you is: every once in a while, XP decides to deviate from that naming convention and add an additional profile with the same naming fashion, only with the .DOMAIN extension stuck to the end of the profile name. And my question is NOT why the deviation (because I already know that that is probably because something caused ntuser.dat to became corrupt and XP rebuilt an additional profile on the fly so that there were no exact duplications), but rather what caused it. Thus far, my only three work arounds have been either delete both profiles and let XP rebuild a new fresh one,copying ntuser.dat, ntuser.ini and such into a new profile and renaming, or make the machine leave and rejoin the domain. I have like 6000 machines to manage, & this is turning into an administrative nightmare when XP usage of profile management decides to be different and then I run into problems with End-Users accesing Profile Favorites, reloading Java applets, unavailable e-mail, Microsoft Office templates unavailable.. etc. I would love to spend my time doing other administration.

[Sudain]

I too have had this issue on sp1 machines. Unfortinetly I never found a solution, I just learned to live with it.

Now with the advent of SP2 I have a different problem, the local admin account thinks it's cute to mimic this behavior by creating a duplicate profile. [admin].[machine name]

If anyone's seen this, or has any ideas on a solution, to either of them, please let us know.

[hunterrose12]

Basically guys this is what I've found in the last few weeks (yes weeks!!) of my researching this topic...

Login as administrator. When your creating a new profile because an old one is corrupt, rename the old profile to userbackup (or whatever) to a backup location. Then delete every profile for that user on the computer. Have the user log back in log back out. This will create their new profile location in My Documents and Settings. According to Microsoft you can import the whole folder that you backed up into the new profile except for three files:

• Ntuser.dat
• Ntuser.dat.log
• Ntuser.ini

Make sure these files are not copied to the new profile or you will have the same corrupt profile problem again.

Additionally to clear up any misconceptions about how the user profile creation works read the following...

1. User logs in.
   
2. A new folder for their profile is created based on their login name.
   
3. That user's SID (Security ID; unique to that users account) is recorded in the registry, along with the path of where that users profile is stored.
   
4. If the users profile for example, USER, is already taken it will create USER.DOMAIN, where domain is the domain you are connected to.
   
5. If USER.DOMAIN is already being used, it will create a new profile called USER.DOMAIN.000 and so on.

It is important to check the registry path for that user also after you have changed recreated their profile so that it is pointing to the right place, as sometimes this does not change when they login and a new profile is created.

It can be found at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

That is where the SID's are stored in the registry. There is a key in there for each SID called ProfileImagePath where it will show you where that profile is stored on the computer.

Hope any of this info helps. If it does please let me know. If you have any questions please let me know also.

[theitbloke]

Thanks hunterrose12,

The info above, has proven absolutely invaluable to me. I've had this problem in the network I work on for a while now, and, after hours of searching I finally stumbled upon this thread. It has helped immensely.

All I need now is to find out where (and if) I can locate each user's SID in Active Directory. Or anywhere on the server for that matter.

Thanks again.

[supportwindows]

Hi guys,
I need your help,
i want to remove a domain user profile (server win2003)from workstation(winxp sp2)so that i should not be able to log in that workstation untill am in to network .For that i removed user profile from user account and deleted user profile from document and setting.but am still able to login using user profile as am not have been to the network after removing that profile.so pls tell me, should i remove the profile from any other location ,please tell me the path

Originally Posted by hunterrose12

Basically guys this is what I've found in the last few weeks (yes weeks!!) of my researching this topic...

Login as administrator. When your creating a new profile because an old one is corrupt, rename the old profile to userbackup (or whatever) to a backup location. Then delete every profile for that user on the computer. Have the user log back in log back out. This will create their new profile location in My Documents and Settings. According to Microsoft you can import the whole folder that you backed up into the new profile except for three files:

• Ntuser.dat
• Ntuser.dat.log
• Ntuser.ini

Make sure these files are not copied to the new profile or you will have the same corrupt profile problem again.

Additionally to clear up any misconceptions about how the user profile creation works read the following...

1. User logs in.
   
2. A new folder for their profile is created based on their login name.
   
3. That user's SID (Security ID; unique to that users account) is recorded in the registry, along with the path of where that users profile is stored.
   
4. If the users profile for example, USER, is already taken it will create USER.DOMAIN, where domain is the domain you are connected to.
   
5. If USER.DOMAIN is already being used, it will create a new profile called USER.DOMAIN.000 and so on.

It is important to check the registry path for that user also after you have changed recreated their profile so that it is pointing to the right place, as sometimes this does not change when they login and a new profile is created.

It can be found at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

That is where the SID's are stored in the registry. There is a key in there for each SID called ProfileImagePath where it will show you where that profile is stored on the computer.

Hope any of this info helps. If it does please let me know. If you have any questions please let me know also.

[Ozzyo99]

Right this has been the proverbial plague for our business, it doesn't happen frequently but when it does it's a pain in the backside, especially when factoring in additional non-standard build software, and requesting licence keys for activations etc.

Glad i bumped into this thread because the answer to the problem is:

1. Log onto system (preferably as admin).

2. Goto start/run/regedt32

3. Locate key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

4. This will show all readable profiles on the machine, it may but probably will not show information leading to the users original profile.

5. Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\UsersName and note the profile name of the original profile, usually the same minus the domain information. Make a note of it.

6. Now go back to regedt and manually edit the duplicate profile location in the ProfileImagePath key to that of the original e.g:

Original - %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\jsmith
Duplicate - %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\jsmith.domain



Change the duplicate to point to the original profile, save the change.

7. Now have the user log back in, and they should now again be operating on their original profile - bring on huge relief!

[tom95134]

If the original NTUSER.DAT file and/or the NTUSER log file was corrupted or deleted then do you need to copy the NTUSER.DAT file from the new folder, [unsername.[domain], to the original folder, [username]? Or will the system create a new NTUSER.DAT because you are "forcing" it to use the [unsername] folder because you have editee the registry?

Thanks.

[lizard]

I'm a dev and had created an uber nt logon script. This script performed flawlessly. On Win 2K clients. Performed sort of spotty on XP clients. I pulled much hair out over this problem. The IT Manager and I went back and forth on this for several days.

He finally found something about "lazy authentication" on the web. Just did a brief search and didn't hit anything real quick, BUT, he changed a registry setting for AD and the problems went away. Might be the above solution. Like I say, I wasn't the one that found it.

In the big scheme, apparently XP sometimes just checks local settings and such and lets things proceed - without doing things like running new or changed scripts OR creating new profiles.

[mrcityrunner]

Hi.

Im new here and really need some help if someone can pleaseee help.

I had a client pc (xp home) which was attached to a windows 2003 server domain. I wanted to make the client PC stand alone and have nothing to do with the server so I stupidly just changed it frmo the domain to a workgroup. The problem is I just realised that I cant access the same profile as when I used to log into the domain.

Please can someone show me how to get around this ASAP as im going to have to get it sorted in the next 8 hours !!

Much appreciated.

Cheers

Rakesh
+44 (0) 7940 338 137

[nuh-muh-tuh]

I've had the problem with the user profile being lost for some time now with just one of the fifty clients on my domain. The computer in question is a sales rep's notebook that is mostly out of the office. Quite frequently and only when he logs on to our domain the user profile gets lost and a new one gets automatically created. My solution to date has been to log on as administrator and do a system restore. This works fine so long as I don't pick a restore point from the previous day. The corruption seems to occur the time he was logged on to our domain previously to the time that the problem shows itself, which makes some sense. This thread has established that the problem is corruption of the user profile, or at least registry entries associated with the profile and gives a few solutions to correct the problem when it occurs. What I'd love to know though is what is causing the problem in the first place so I can treat the cause and not just the symptons. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

[DaveC2003]

Check the permissions for the user on the server. Each user should have full access to their own profile.

Refer to the link below that has some relevance to your problem.

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/.../rmng_usr.html

[Joecool1960]

As with some others, I have been confused by the Domain vs User-name issue. I haven't tried the suggestions yet, but they sound logical!

[ronaldinho68]

Originally Posted by Ozzyo99

Right this has been the proverbial plague for our business, it doesn't happen frequently but when it does it's a pain in the backside, especially when factoring in additional non-standard build software, and requesting licence keys for activations etc.

Glad i bumped into this thread because the answer to the problem is:

1. Log onto system (preferably as admin).

2. Goto start/run/regedt32

3. Locate key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

4. This will show all readable profiles on the machine, it may but probably will not show information leading to the users original profile.

5. Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\UsersName and note the profile name of the original profile, usually the same minus the domain information. Make a note of it.

6. Now go back to regedt and manually edit the duplicate profile location in the ProfileImagePath key to that of the original e.g:

Original - %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\jsmith
Duplicate - %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\jsmith.domain



Change the duplicate to point to the original profile, save the change.

7. Now have the user log back in, and they should now again be operating on their original profile - bring on huge relief!

Hi, everybody.

This is very usefull tip, but, does anybody know if there are things that can not be imported in this way?

I had a client (xp pro) that I had to "rejoin" to the domain, because the domain was recreated (I don