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Hello We are going to relocate our whole office physically into a new office location. Currently, I have domain controller DC1, DC2 and file server. File server sharing the files to different department to use. I would like to get rid of the two DCs (DC1 and DC2) for some reasons, and then rebuild the other DC in the new office. But I would like to keep the file server. I don't mind to redo the sharing or security settings because I have just around 10 or less people. In this case, do I have to disjoin the file server from the old domain first? or I can do the disjoin even without any of the old DC in the new network? Also for the end users' PC, should I disjoin before moving the PCs away? If we disjoin the PC from the old domain, can the user get back to the profile (e.g. files on the Desktops?) Thanks Timothy
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You should have no issues joining the new domain with the existing desktops. Just make sure you know the password for the local administrator account. Should work to let the user logon to new domain once, then logon with another account that has local administrative rights and point the Reg_Expand_Sz ProfileImagePath to the old profile.
--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--
Cheers. Will give a shot later. Thanks for your great help.
Timothy
Sounds good, you're welcome.
Hello DSPatrick,
Finally I have made the office relocation. The new domain is running. I also tried to change the "ProfileImagePath", however, there is some problems. The old profile of ProfileImagePath (say, C:\Users\timothy) and now in the new server, the profile it comes with C:\Users\timothy.xyz , where XYZ is the domain name. I changed that by removing .xyz in the "ProfileImagePath" value.
After I change, I login as the timothy.xyz account, the login seems without issue, but it will give me Signing Out of the account. That means, no matter what, it will go back to the login screen.
Any reason why?
Timothy
The edits you did may have been fatal for the profile. Some general info on how windows creates profiles.
If you logon to the local machine first, then to the domain you would end up with two profiles.
%username%
and
%username%.%userdomain%
Else if you logon to the domain first, then to the local machine you would end up with
%username%
and
%username%.%computername%
If you build a new domain even with same name the GUID for domain is different and the members will all need to be joined to new domain. Users will get a new profile when they logon to new domain. It may be possible to point the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
of new profile back to old domain profile location.
--please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--
Thanks DSPatrick.
Ok, I will join to the new domain again in the new domain. And I would like to confirm if this is necessary to disjoin the existing domain first? (all before leaving the old domain location). And so do the end user PCs need to do the same?
or we can force disjoin the domain after leaving the old domain location?
By the way, I saw that there are lots of profile in this registry under "..\CurrentVersion\ProfileList", with some of the users who have logged on to that PC before. So I simply change the ProfileList of the "REG_SZ" and the "REG_EXPAND_SZ"?
Cheers
Timothy
I would like to confirm if this is necessary to disjoin the existing domain first?
It should not make a difference. Just make sure you know the password for the local administrator account so you can logon locally to do the new domain join.
