Fab's AutoBackup forums

mcbsys

Member

Registered: 2018-11-16

Posts: 12

Create profiles for domain users?

Just bought Fab's AutoBackup 7 Pro and have hit a snag. I backed up a machine with 7 domain accounts. Now when I restore, the only option is to create local accounts one at a time. I don't want to local accounts, and I can't ask the 7 users (many of them are part-time volunteers) to log in one by one to pre-create the profiles for their domain accounts.

Also, it seems the restore only works one user at a time instead of doing all users at once like the backup.

Can I handle multiple existing domain users with Fab's?

Fab

Administrator

Registered: 2011-05-11

Posts: 1,308

Re: Create profiles for domain users?

All domain user profiles must have been created first. Then there should not be any problem restoring several users at once. Then it works like with regular profiles

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Fab

mcbsys

Member

Registered: 2018-11-16

Posts: 12

Re: Create profiles for domain users?

Thanks for your reply.

I see now how the multi-user restore works (I was looking for checkboxes like on the backup).

Is there a way to create an empty domain profiles without requiring each user to logon to the new machine? I've seen other tools do this (USMT, ForensIT), but so far I haven't found a way to do that manually, even outside of Fabs, e.g. a command-line tool.

Fab

Administrator

Registered: 2011-05-11

Posts: 1,308

Re: Create profiles for domain users?

so far I haven't found a way to do that manually, even outside of Fabs, e.g. a command-line tool.

You could use a script for that, every user account should have a password or this will not work at all :

runas /savecred /user:Domain\User1 /password:Password1 "C:\Windows\System32\systray.exe" 
runas /savecred /user:Domain\User2 /password:Password2 "C:\Windows\System32\systray.exe" 
...
runas /savecred /user:Domain\UserX /password:PasswordX "C:\Windows\System32\systray.exe" 

Systray.exe closes itself automatically. When it is called, Windows will create the basic folder structure and basic registry hive for the target user account. Then, run Fab's AutoBackup and it will see the new profiles.

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Fab

mcbsys

Member

Registered: 2018-11-16

Posts: 12

Re: Create profiles for domain users?

Interesting idea, but that's the problem:  I don't know the passwords and really, I don't want to know.

I did some more hunting around but so far, I only found variations on the approach you suggest. Many say to start cmd.exe using runas.

So it seems there are no pre-built tools to do this. I wonder how USMT et. al. handle it. Maybe they just load the files and add the SID and path to

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

I checked a machine that I migrated using USMT. That registry key lists the eight users that I migrated even though only two have logged on so far. I'm not sure if or how USMT handles HKCU for each user--maybe manipulating NTUSER.DAT directly?

Fab's Autobackup is still useful in situations where the profiles already exist. It would be nice if it could optionally create profiles on the fly without needing passwords.

Fab

Administrator

Registered: 2011-05-11

Posts: 1,308

Re: Create profiles for domain users?

The problem is that I do not know how all of this works behind the scene. It's easy to screw up the things

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Fab