kingsc

So I've been playing around abit with ntuser.dat in regedit inside a VM..... but where exactly am I supposed to copy this registry set to????

I apologize, its just that editing ntuser.dat is a new area for me. What would be the cleanest way of doing this? Well most of the customizations were done to the OS already before installation on the reference machine so I guess all I really need to accomplish is making the My Docs, Pics, etc show up correctly. I did some desktop shortcuts, start menu modifications..... oh I wish I could remember now.

Will this keep all of the customization I've done to the "base" profile?

This is a no-go. Described what happened earlier when just deleting the line. Deleting the whole file made the problem worse. Now no matter what it says "My Docs, Pics, etc.", and the custom icons for the folders are gone.

Also tried changing the Owner line to read "Owner=" This doesn't work either; manually browsing to a profile just shows "My Docs, pics, etc." EDIT - And silly me, the reason I couldn't find the desktop.ini file earlier was because my folder options were configured to hide system files ;p EDIT #2 - From research, I may end up having to try booting up SysPrep into factory mode, and then resealing.... I have a really bad feeling about doing this however. At least I have images on standby

Yuck, no love so far. So first I tried editing the desktop.ini Owner line to read as %username%. I created two profiles afterward; testuser1 and testuser2. Logging into testuser1 looked perfect of course, because the desktop.ini's owner line was perfect for the other profile(ITAdmin). However, upon logging into testuser2, looking at testuser1's documents revealed that this wasn't going to work; testuser1's documents actually showed up as "testuser2's documents, pictures, etc". (So apparantly it was going by what profile was currently logged in.) Second, I tried deleting the Owner line completely. Recreated the same two profiles. Upon logging into testuser2 and manually browsing to testuser1..... they showed up as "My Documents, pictures, etc". Am I attacking the wrong area? Is there a registry key I should be modifying?

Is this in a domain environment? Are you a domain admin? If so, did you know you can go into your own computer management and then Action > Connect to Another Computer? You can then just grant them local admin access easily. If you have to do this alot.... I know our system admin pushed out a script that executes upon login to do this. I can see if I can post it if you want.

Are you familiar with imaging at all? A 30 dollar or so copy of Acronis True Image Home could have saved you a huge headache via HDD cloning.

Ahhhhh very interesting! Thank you all for the responses! I must admit that I don't know as much about imaging as I'd like and I was following a procedure I found on the web to create a base user profile and copy that to the default user profile. So your saying I could just copy over the ntuser.dat file and that would retain all profile settings? But yeah, when I look in the Default User my docs folder, there is no desktop.ini. So I should create one I assume? I need to see if I can research how to create one and how the parameters work, i.e. you mentioned "Owner" earlier... I wonder if you can do a Owner=%USERNAME% ? EDIT - And apologies to Ninja, #1 you were right and #2 I didn't realize till now how my earlier statement sounded rude.

Welp, no desktop.ini file in the default user folder. I created another test user, rebooted the computer, logged in, and did a search of the entire C: drive. The only desktop.ini files that even turned up were not even worth mentioning, a notepad view showed two of them to be empty, and a nother being related to MSOffice, nothing specific to a profile. Any other guesses? I'm going to look further into the desktop.ini and maybe research the ntuser.dat files. EDIT - desktop.ini apparently has nothing to do with customizing profiles, only with customizing how a folder's contents is displayed.

Awesome, thank you I'll look into it and get back to you.

About the leasing company, if the CoAs are for XP, and they are imaging with a VLK of XP that they've paid for, they are fine. If the product version is different(Vista CoAs) from what they are imaging with, they have to purchase downgrade licenses on each machine, or have purchased Software Assurance on their VLK of XP. *EDIT: And unfortunately, I could be wrong but I dont' think there's an effective way that you can verify this with them besides trusting what they tell you. Licensing is a nightmare, I'm just getting into it and have had several discussions with Microsoft and only feel a *little* more knowledgeable from where I started. A good link to alot of licensing info. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/volbrief.mspx EDIT2 - I think if you want to sell these computers you were mentioning.... what I would do is see what OEM stickers they came with, get ahold of one copy of the OEM OS(Yes, it's different from retail), and install it using the OEM key. Then you should be fine. That way you only need to buy 1 copy of the OEM software, and you don't need to buy any additional keys. If the machine does not have an OEM CoA on it... then I think you'd have to purchase a retail FPP or if you have alot of those.... a VLK, but I think that's a tad overboard for just trying to get rid of some old computers.

Wow, no one can even take a stab at this?

Windows XP Professional w/SP3 I've created a universal image and have been deploying it for a while now. I've recently discovered an issue. While setting up the image, I created a profile, named it testuser and configured it the way I wanted it to be whenever anyone logged in and a local profile is created. To do this, I copied the testuser profile and over-wrote the Default User profile. Problem is, and there is probably a very simple fix, that when logged into the profile, and clicking the My Documents shortcut, everything is fine. However, If I were to log into a seperate account or access the computer remotely, if I manually browse to C:\Documents and Settings\<user>, instead of it saying "<user>'s Documents", it says "testuser's Documents" and if I browse into that, it says "testuser's pictures", etc. I loaded up VMWare and did a fresh install of XP Pro w/SP3 and checked out the Default User folder there. I opened up c:\Documents and Settings\Default User\My Documents and it's empty. I then tried deleting the testuser's pics, movies, music folders from the default profile of the imaged computer and then created a new account. I browsed to C:\Documents and Settings\<new user account> and the My Documents folder wasn't there. So I double click the My DOcuments shortcut on the desktop and it created the folder, but nothing inside of it. I opened IE and attempted to save a picture in hopes it would restore the my pictures folder but nope. Nada. It just saved to the My Documents folder and that was it. Any ideas? Must be a registry key edit somewhere?

Funny, we have the exact same type of workstations in our company. My image has no problem with this. Are you keeping the two drivers in seperate folders? Are you using PortableDML? If so, don't. Also, are you using SysPrepDriverScanner? If you aren't, start using it. Try that and see if it helps at all. I'd love your feedback as I haven't had the opportunity to try this on multiple occasions. EDIT - Woops, read your whole post, ignore the spdrvscanner part.

So I have my universal image, works great. Only problem now is that I send off workstations all over the country. I just now realized that I may have changed the 'time' on workstations to the correct time, but the Time Zones are off for all computers sent to CST and EST!!! I know I can modify sysprep to request this information during mini-setup, but I may have to image 4-6 workstations at a time and don't want to have to sit there and wait for it to prompt me. Is there any effective way to automating this? Or am I just pretty much stuck manually changing the time zone after the imaging process is complete?

Wow... you've got a good one there . I've done alot of screwing around with NLite and Driverpacks, never seen that. Of course just about anything can be fixed in the registry, but I'll be darned to tell you even where to look, lol. One thing I know from the guy who created NLite, he said to only use NLite *once* in the process of creating the ISO. Don't use NLite over and over with the same install files, a high chance of corruption can result. I'd say start from scratch, plan it out, and do it all in one shot if you haven't already.

Well... you could try going into device manager, opening the properties for that device, and see if it has a Power Management tab. If it does, select it and disable the ability to power the device off to save power. Other then that, I'm not sure, sorry.

As above, I have a user that has this BSOD: BAD_POOL_CALLER With the following codes: 0x000000C2, 0x00000043, 0xCD37900, 0x00000000, 0x00000000 I could just re-image this workstation, but honestly I'd love to learn a little and was wondering how/where I could learn how to translate dump files for debugging purposes. The microsoft KB article seems to tell a bit... but.. since I don't know jack about debugging, I can't reallly translate it to learn how to do it So 1) I'm sure this is a simple driver that if I can just access the HDD to remove it, I can avoid going through the hassle of backing up/re-imaging, so if anyone can translate this that'd be great, and 2) Where can I learn the basics of Debugging XP Pro Error codes??? Thanks!

Ew. Well..... if you can get into a PE you could rebuild the registry from a restore point by copying the five hives from the RP to your original. I don't remember the procedure off the top of my head since I do it as a last resort before a complete re-image but I can probably dig it up if you need it.

Oooooooo 3rd party firewalls. Fun, fun. These can be a nightmare, at least for me. I don't know how wonderful Eset is compared to TMIS or NIS, but I know with most 3rd party firewalls you need to be familiar with how to configure it. To eliminate this possiblity first off, personally I'd uninstall the firewall and see if the network functionality is there first. Then at least you'd know if you hooked everything up right. What I've heard is that since AV/AS/Firewalls are installed at an almost kernal level, simply disabling it can sometimes do nothing, hence why I recommended temporarily uninstalling it to take one less level of complexity out of the situation.

That's a very interesting problem and solution, I'll have to write that one down.

Hrmm.. Are you familiar with the concept of K.I.S.S??? Have you tried the simple things first? Like running IE with no add-ons or completely resetting it? Trying to debugg code for your RAM, which would cause a global problem, not just IE(More then likely), seems like skipping quite a few steps. Alot of times, 3rd party programs and malware can install add-ons/toolbars that can cause IE to crash. I must say though, I am completely overwhelmed with the amazing talent of the previous fellow being able to read that code, I wish I had half that skill. That's all completely greek to me.

Errm??? Could you please clarify? I don't quite understand what you're asking. Do you mean you have you two seperate installs of the OS on the machine, creating a dual boot situation? If so, I'd recommend re-imaging it. If this isn't what you're talking about.... I can tell you all the workstations we get here come with Vista Business Pro installed, and I apply the universal image I've created which utilizes XP Pro with our VLK.

Hi I'm Steve. I'm 28 and I work for the IT department of a fast-growing company located in San Diego, CA. I specialize in Imaging and Desktop Support. I'm A+ certified and have been working in the IT industry for 2 years.