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I'm setting up a lab with computers running specialized software. The computer is registered to a domain. I set up an admin account containing changes to the settings, bookmarks, etc. Whenever a user logs into the computer, I want all the setttings for their account to be the same as the admin account. How do I do this?

Thanks

3 Answers 3

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Pretty sure you need to sysprep the systems and include CopyProfile in your answer file.

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

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  • Oops, forgot to mention, tried that. I made an unattend.xml file copied from that link, and ran the command. When i got an error message saying that I had to restart my computer to reinstall windows...and whenever I restarted, same thing popped up. I ended up just wiping the computer and doing a clean install Apr 17, 2012 at 18:18
  • Sounds like you had an error during the sysprep process. Could be a driver issue, or just a problem with the answer file itself. I've seen some documents on recovering from this type of error, but never had success on fixing it! I've always just performed a clean install and tried again as well. One thing that I started doing to help save time is take an image of the pre-syspreped machine so that if something goes wrong you can easily roll back! Apr 18, 2012 at 11:55
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Since these are domain connected machines, I would build a default domain profile they all can use. There's a pretty good step by step run down here http://www.ahmedgroup.co.uk/blogs/44/Windows-7-default-domain-profile.html. This way all the machines use the exact same default profile and you only have to update one location if you want to change the defaults.

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  • That won't work for me, because this lab has a specific set of software that other domain connected computers don't have. Apr 20, 2012 at 18:59
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If you can make it dirty You could use a tool called "Windows Enabler", get the "Copy profile" button active and copy your customized profile over the "Default User" profile. Don't forget to set the permissions to everyone.

This sounds like a joke, but commercial deployment solutions actually use this method.

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  • This sounds like a joke, but commercial deployment solutions actually use this method. They even modify the registry to change Your profile home path to the "Default User" profile Dir, so You can change the "Default User" Profile while just logging in as a user w/o the copy step. I don't have any expirience with that, but sounds interessting never the less
    – Sam Spade
    Apr 17, 2012 at 18:05
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    Last time i tried it, Windows enabler did not work with windows 7, it worked with Vista, but pressing the button on Win 7 did nothing.
    – Zypher
    Apr 17, 2012 at 18:13
  • Thanks for Your answer. Since we are in a process to evaluate an upgrade to win7 I will check this right away tomorrow. I see problems with this not very tidy tools and actions all the way, but my company wants to believe the deployment tool vendor so much. And the documented path described by Microsoft does sound like a nightmare to me also. Since we are a Unix shop on the inside, all this Microsoft nonsense is als greek to me anyway.
    – Sam Spade
    Apr 17, 2012 at 18:45

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