Copying to Default profile in Windows 7 without using Sysprep

Does any know how to do this?
In XP I used to configure a profile to how I liked it. Then I would restart, log in as a different user and copy the one profile into the default profile with windows explorer. It worked great.

In Win7 half of the folders are greyed out with a lock on them, I don't even think they are actual folders, the look like shortcuts that connect the legacy folder names to the new Vista/7/2008 folders.
And I don't have permissions. I think I did it once in vista by taking ownership of the default user folder, and the profile I was copying from.

The only supported way is via sysprep. Those folders you are referring to are junction points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point). These junction points are important as they allow old program that point the old folders to still function.

Unfortunately you can not copy junction points. If you do attempt to copy them your copy tool will step into the junction point rather than copying the object itself. This will lead to extremely undesirable results.

Now your default profile does not have to have these junction points (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756982.aspx). But deleting the default profile and it's junction will break any application (say an installer) that attempts to edit the default profile using legacy folders.

If you want to try fiddling around, this is probably going to be your best bet:

1. boot into winpe
2. run del /q /s /f on the C:\users\default (this will delete all files in all folders but not the folders themselfs, leaving the junctions in tact)
3. copy the profile you wish to be the default to c:\users\default using robocopy with these parameters: /E /XJ
4. go back to windows, create a new user and test

Now you will have some other side effects due to registry settings that are hard coded for the user you copied from. What they will be I have no idea.

I personally sysprep a configured image, throw that default profile onto the network, and inject it into the image while it is still generalized. Any additional changes are done using file and regedits to the profile on the network.

here is a good microsoft blog on this: http://blogs.technet.com/b/deployme...7-and-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx?PageIndex=1

TLDR: Be extremely careful when not following the supported method as there will be side effects.

mgulbran said:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973289

Quick lazy google - might point you in a good direction though.

Click to expand...

lazy indeed, this is exactly what he was trying to avoid .

Here is what I have done, and it seems to work:

Create “George” user
Rename “Administrator” to “GMDTech”
Install all programs under “GMDTech” account. (this makes it so when you copy the profile later and rename it to “default” you won’t have tons of adobe temp files and crap in the profile)
Log in as the user “George” and change all settings, visual, crap, power, screensaver, etc.
Restart the computer, log in as GMDTech
Copy the “George” folder into C:\Users
Rename “Default” to “Default Backup”
Rename “George – Copy” to “Default”
Edit permissions on “Default” so to the following
- Everyone (Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, Read)

- System (Full control)

- Administrators (Full control)

- Users (Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, Read)

Create a new user called “profiletest”
Restart the computer and log in as “profiletest”
If everything looks good, go into the control panel, go to users accounts, and click “configure advanced user profiles properties”
Delete the profiles for George and GMDTech. (If you delete them using windows explorer in C:\users, you will get a temporary profile when logging in because there are registry settings that were not deleted and it will think the profile is broken)
Restart the computer and log in as GMDTech
Delete the George and profiletest users and profiles


Cliff notes
1. Setup everything how you want it while logged in as a certain user
2. Restart the computer, log in as a different user.
3. Rename the Default profile to DefaultBackup or something
4. Make a copy of the profile you edited and rename it to Default
5. Change the permissions on the new Default profile to match the old

Ive used the User Profile 2.0 tool from Forensit on a Vista machine and it worked great
http://www.forensit.com/downloads.html

dbwillis said:

Ive used the User Profile 2.0 tool from Forensit on a Vista machine and it worked great
http://www.forensit.com/downloads.html

Click to expand...

The way I tried seemed to work, I am going to throw a test machine out there to see if any problems arise. It is always good to have a few ways of accomplishing the same thing, so thanks for letting me know about this.

dbwillis said:

Ive used the User Profile 2.0 tool from Forensit on a Vista machine and it worked great
http://www.forensit.com/downloads.html

Click to expand...

the ForensIT tools are very nice. Used them myself quite a bit.
But not on any Vista or 7 machines yet.

Everything is still holding well. I ghosted some of the computers, had some problems at first, I could make a ghost image of the full drive but it kept failing when I was ghosting back to another hard drive, turns out it was the recovery partition. Eventually someone will royally screw one up with a virus or something, so I will go back and redo one from scratch with the win7 cd, and not the "restore" cd, hopefully that will cut down the 20 gb image by quite a bit.