What do these profile folders mean?

What's the difference between the following folders in Users:

testuser
testuser.MYDOMAIN
testuser.MYMACHINE

I know what the second two are. the second is a domain based profile, the third is a local based profile. What's the first? Why do I see these types of folder names on machines and how would one log into that account? (the first one, with no extension) If I create a local user, it creates testuser.MYMACHINE. Where did the folder "testuser" come from?
Thanks!

Meshman said:

What's the difference between the following folders in Users:

testuser
testuser.MYDOMAIN
testuser.MYMACHINE

I know what the second two are. the second is a domain based profile, the third is a local based profile. What's the first? Why do I see these types of folder names on machines and how would one log into that account? (the first one, with no extension) If I create a local user, it creates testuser.MYMACHINE. Where did the folder "testuser" come from?
Thanks!

This varies on the state of the computer and when the account was created. To give you an example... On a computer I built for a company, I log in as a user on it prior to joining the domain. That username exists in the domain, so it would then create a new profile with the tag of .<domain>, but leaving the username I logged in as just <username>. In some cases, if you log in for the first time on a machine, it will not tag on the .<domain> part because it is the first time it has seen the user. You can create a local user login, which if it has a profile already created for <username> that has not been deleted, it will go with <username>.<machinename> to differentiate the profiles to avoid data loss.

Now in the case of your situation, it could be that the account on the machine was deleted, then recreated, getting a completely different SID so it was forced to not reuse the current testuser profile and created a new one to avoid potential data loss.

Thanks for the reply!

My biggest problem is that user profile (with no ext) contains all the licensing information related to the software on that machine as well as all user settings and so on. I've tried copying this profile to the domain profile and the software is still unlicensed.

Here's the really strange thing. He logs into 4 different machines (2 win7, 2 XP) and every one of them did this. One day he had a desktop with the profile name "user", the next day he starts off with a new profile called "user.MYDOMAIN" and no account (that I can see) linked to the 'user' folder. He says he's logged in exactly this way all along. It's like somebody snuck in here and joined all 4 machines to the domain but they always have been. Any thoughts on how I can repair this?

Thanks!

Meshman said:

Thanks for the reply!

My biggest problem is that user profile (with no ext) contains all the licensing information related to the software on that machine as well as all user settings and so on. I've tried copying this profile to the domain profile and the software is still unlicensed.

Here's the really strange thing. He logs into 4 different machines (2 win7, 2 XP) and every one of them did this. One day he had a desktop with the profile name "user", the next day he starts off with a new profile called "user.MYDOMAIN" and no account (that I can see) linked to the 'user' folder. He says he's logged in exactly this way all along. It's like somebody snuck in here and joined all 4 machines to the domain but they always have been. Any thoughts on how I can repair this?

Thanks!

Well, unfortunately, I have not really played with a Windows 7 in a domain environment, let alone a mixed environment to see what might cause this, however, from what I recall from how Windows handles this situation, it creates a Unique SID per profile. The problem is, how he is creating these accounts. Because the way it should work, is if he is logging in on a Windows machine with a domain, it should only be using one SID associated with that login. The Local accounts, on the otherhand, would be unique specific to its machine, and you couldn't 'move' that SID to another machine.

Now I do know that with XP, the Domain login screen will have 3 entry lines, 2 if you minimize the options. The 3rd one would be showing the available login options such as 'this computer' and '<domain>' or more if you have a multi-domain tree.

With Windows 7, on the other hand, I believe you are required to type <domain>\<username> unless that computer has been specifically set with a specific domain, other wise, it assumes you are logging in locally.

Now technically, he should not be able to log on locally to the computer unless and account was set up locally.

As for solving your problems with the licensing, the problem is more on how licensing was done. Since you stated it is only with that account, the only thing I can think of is that there is a registry entry that is only on that user, which you need to hunt down, export it, then import it into the user who needs it. The problem with this method is not all software will use the registry, but do something where they encrypt it with more information such as user specific, like the SID, to prevent people from copying licensing information like this and 'mass' deploy it.

By technicality, most programs should be usable by anyone on the computer, at least, I know MS ones and a few others are setup that way.

Ok, thanks a lot for the input. I'll try and track down what's not working and deal with each app one at a time.