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XP Pro install suddenly changes Administrator location


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OK, this is bizarre. My install image has a ton of software on it that has been installing rock solid now for a long time, many many images worth. I recently integrated the new Ryan 2.1.3 update pack with the new hotfixes, and am now seeing a strange change in the installation.

The winnt.sif gives the installed system a name, XP-PRO. During install, the installation process seems to create the following user profiles during installation ...

  • Administrator
  • Administrator.XP-PRO
  • All Users

Most stuff as it's installed used to go into the Administrator profile - my scripts would move/copy stuff around as needed, usually to All Users. Now it seems to be installing to the Administrator.XP-PRO profile, so all the scripts are failing of course.

I don't know where this came from - last week the installs all went just fine. Yesterday they started failing, and I've tracked it down to this new profile. All the references to things installed in %systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu now fail.

Anyone know what's going on ? I can change the scripts no problem, but I'm wondering if there's some setting or something that I've missed.

DC.

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OK - just ran another test. Clean XP Pro Corp source with SP2 ...

1) nLite to reduce

2) Bashrat drivers

3) RVM Integrator

4) Copy my own $OEM$ stuff and apps

Still does the same thing - creates and uses a Administrator.XP-PRO profile directory in c:\documents and settings. There is also the expected plain old Administrator profile dir there too, but it only has an Application Data directory in it.

WTF ?

Next steps - back all the way out to find at which step the change is introduced. The mains things I had changed were upgrading to Ryan's 2.1.3 Update pack, adding a few more addons via RVM_Integrator and a couple of my own apps.

DC.

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I've been having that exact same problem. It will create a "username" profile and a "username.compname" profile. And I have no idea how to fix it. Sorry. :}

When did it start happening for you ? Have you applied the Ryan 2.1.3 update pack ?

DC.

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Has no-one seen anything like this before ?

I can reproduce your "bug" by installing XP on the same partition that an existing XP installation, with identic "Documents & Settings" folder, and optionally with different system and/or programfiles folders.

AFAIK, this tagging of the profiles's folders is made to allow this sort of concurrent installs to run with the same "D&S" folder containing profiles with the same screenname, but different on drive.

My guess is that your $oem$ thing is copying files to X:\Documents & Settings\Administrator that XP setup recognize as "oops there's an old profile here i need to use another folder" (maybe ntuser.dat ? i really don't know if this guess is even possible ???)

About your scripts, you just shouldn't be using an hardcoded profile folder name ; instead, you can retrieve it from the registry : HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList contains a subkey for each profile (and special values for All Users and Default User, just look), whose name is the user's SID. You can easily catch the admin profile by checking if the key name ends with "-500", then read the ProfileImagePath value to know the local folder name.

++

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Bonjour Delprat -

My install process forces a format of the install partition, so there shouldn't be any residual profiles sitting around. I redid my O&O CleverCache installer, and that messes with the Administrator profile location. The problem shows up for a later app that can't find the right location because it's now Adminstrator.XP-PRO. Perhaps that's it.

I'm building a clean install now, sans Clevercache.

XP Pro Corp with SP2

nLite to reduce

Bashrat for drivers

RVM Integrator for update pack and many addon packs

All my apps stripped except for a couple

Will post more details as I know them, and as I have time. (Hah, time !)

DC>

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  • 2 weeks later...

I actually just finally figured the problem out, for me at least. I went in to look at my nlite.inf file. It was loaded full of the same lines adding users from the many times that I ran nlite. So I deleted all the lines that were the same and it worked perfect! Sweet!!

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This is actually not a bug at all. When you install Windows XP it creates the "Documents And Settings" folder, and then populates it with the name of your predefined accounts, for instance Administrator. Sometimes, when doing a reinstall for instance, it's possible for the isntaller to find that the directory (ie the user profile) already exisits. In these cases it appends a file extension of the computer name to the account name. So, if your computer's name is "XP-PRO" and there's already an Administrator folder in "Documents and Settings", then instead it will create a folder named "Administrator.XP-PRO", rather than overwriting your old settings.

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