[stretcheboy]

Hi All,
I'm struggling to find an solution to migrating XP roaming profiles stored on a W2K server onto our new x64 2008 R2 server.

All users (85 total) use Win XP and roaming profiles.
As much as I dislike roaming profiles, there are various business reasons why I need to keep them.
All profiles are stored in various folders on a W2k server. Profiles are kept in one folder and documents in another.

How best to migrate these without any real change to the user.
I need to keep their desktop icons, My Documents etc, outlook settings etc etc.

I have created new shared folders on the new server and with test accounts, it creates a profile with the V2 extension. Seems XP cannot read these..?

Any advice and opinions would be much apprecated.
I'm sure I'm not the only one going through this pain...


Regards
Mike.

[Ossian]

V2 profiles are from Vista or above, and if you logon to an XP box with the test account, you should still get a "normal" profile, roaming or local

You could consider folder redirection for MyDocuments and Desktop -- this will cause a lot less traffic than roaming profiles do and reduce the actual profiles to a manageable size

[cruachan]

What Ossian said, plus Roaming Profiles inevitably corrupt over time. Good idea that never really worked properly IME.

[RobW]

And as I learned the hard way, don't mix folder redirection with roaming profiles because it doesn't work.

[MarkJones]

Hi Everyone.

Moving profile shares from one server to another should be straight forward, I did this not long ago.

If the 2 servers belong to the same domain, you can use NTBACKUP on 2000 to backup the profiles share on the source server, then install the NTRESTORE utility on 2008, then restore the BKF file on the 2008 server.

Share the PROFILE folder on the 2008 machine, you will also need to change the profile path for each user in AD.

I found using NTBACKUP very useful when doing migrations as in keeps NTFS security permission, backups data in direcroties that are protected by permissions(ACCESS IS DENIED MESSAGES) and long filesnames.

PS you could test the aboue with 1 or 2 users first.

Regards
Mark

[joeqwerty]

Windows XP/2003 user profiles are not compatible or interoperable with Windows Vista/7/2008 user profiles. The best you can do would be to configure Folder Redirection for the Application Data folder in order for the profiles to "share" some settings that are stored in Application Data. That's as close as you're going to get. The bulk of the user profiles will be stored in different roaming profiles because of the incompatibility between the two.

[MarkJones]

Hi


Correct me if i'm wrong here but would you only get V2 profile if you logged on to Win7 & Server 2008.

From whats is in the original post, 2008 server will only be used to provide the share for the PROFILES folder.

There in no mention of a change of clients, so the profile would stay the same format \\SERVERNAME\PROFILES\%USERNAME%

!!!!! What type of client did your test accounts logon to???????


Mark

[joeqwerty]

Originally Posted by MarkJones

Hi


Correct me if i'm wrong here but would you only get V2 profile if you logged on to Win7 & Server 2008.

From whats is in the original post, 2008 server will only be used to provide the share for the PROFILES folder.

There in no mention of a change of clients, so the profile would stay the same format \\SERVERNAME\PROFILES\%USERNAME%

!!!!! What type of client did your test accounts logon to???????


Mark

Mark, you're right but I assumed when the OP said that V2 profiles were being created that the client had changed from Windows XP to Windows Vista or Windows 7. Windows XP will not create V2 profiles regardless of the server OS where the profiles are stored.

[RobW]

I had to do it the hard way. First, the XP profiles are not going to work on your Server 2008 R2. Second, if you are going to use folder redirection on Server 2008 R2, then don't waste your time creating roamng profiles because the two will not work together.

I did it the hard way with 103 users. I created 103 users manually. I brought in extra help and paid him for 19 hours to compensate for the time. I used a 'common' computer that I joined to the Windows 2008 R2 domain. I logged on as each user (103) which created a V2 profile. I copied over the desktop and favourites from the XP profile to new V2 profile. The user's My Documents where mapped to a share outside of the profile.

With folder redirection enabled, the desktop will follow XP clients. With Win 7 clients, even more folders will follow user like favorites for example. You will lose app data and any other info in the XP profile because it is not compatible with V2 profiles.

[MarkJones]

Hi Guys

How about this......

Server 2000/3 with XP romaing profiles the path will be \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME\%USERNAME%

Server 2003 with Win Vista/Win72008 roaming profiles \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME\%USERNAME%.V2


So with server 2000/3, you copy/move/migrate the PROFILE SHARES to Server 2008 R2 and keep the client computers the same(still on XP), then the roaming profile path will only change in line with the SERVERNAME change.

Old Server path to roaming profile = \\SERVER2000\PROFILES\AUSER
New Server path to roaming profile = \\SERVER2008r2\PROFILES\AUSER

As the client copmuters are staying on XP why would the system create a .V2 extension?????

The reason the .V2 profile would be created is due to the user account being logged on to a system that is new than XP E.G Vista, Win7 & 2008 .

To put this one to bed, the original post needs to be clarified on what process was carried out.


Mark