how to get setttings back after sysprep

johnhoh · 14 Sep 2016

I just successfully used sysprep to install a new motherboard. Then after bootup when I went to logon to "Dad" (my win7 username) it took me to a blank desktop. I see here that my desktop folder is now

c:\Users\Dad.Computername

whereas it used to be just

c:\Users\Dad

Moreover, my plethora of system customizations are gone as well. Can someone tell me how to get all my settings back? There does not seem to be a way to simply log onto "Dad" anymore as the logon screen shows the word "Dad" but it actually takes me to "Dad.Computername", which appears to be a new user with no customizations.

Thanks!

Megahertz07 · 14 Sep 2016

John, sorry to ask, but I didn't understand what did you do. What sysprep has helped with the new MB?
Kari is the sysprep guru. I've use his tutorial to move the Users folder from C to D.
I've seen on one of his tutorials that if you launch sysprep from a installed Windows, when you exit sysprep you should create a temporary user as an existing user won't be recognized. Once logged with the temporary user, just log off, log on with your ID and then delete the temporary user.
Do you have a Dad.Computername user that you can log on?

johnhoh · 14 Sep 2016

I used sysrep to uninstall all old drivers and install fresh drivers on the new motherboard. I was expecting to have to create a new user account like you said, but when the new motherboard booted up I was able to logon directly to my old account, Dad. But when I did so, as far as I can tell, windows created a new account from scratch, naming it Dad.computer

The problem is, within my hard drive's C:\User folder are now two accounts, Dad and Dad.Computer. When you tell windows to logon to Dad, it instead logs on to the new account Dad.Computer. I was able to copy files from C:\User\Dad to C:\User\Dad.Computer, however the abundance of registry settings that formerly applied to Dad do not apply to Dad.Computer. These is simply no way that I can see to logon to the old account, Dad. So I guess my question amounts to: how does one transfer EVERY setting that applies to one win7 account to a new win7 account? How can I access my old account? Its there on the ghard drive but in the pic you can see that windows is calling it "account unknown"

edit: attached is a pic of my user info. Everything I need to access is inside of "Account Unknown",
but as you can see there is only one account to click on, the one with the orange icon, which points to the folder c:\User\Dad.COMPUTER

Ranger4 · 14 Sep 2016

Have you tried going into Control Panel, select System & then Advanced System Settings & then select the Computer Name tab. On that window is Change, select that & change the name to what you had originally.

This is only a suggestion & I don't know if it will work. It might be a good idea to make sure that you have reliable full back before making any changes.

johnhoh · 14 Sep 2016

actually the computer name has not changed. The issue is that sysprep appeared to recreate my user name (Dad) but does not point to the old user folder or settings

Megahertz07 · 15 Sep 2016

On the image you posted you have an unknown account. Can you edit to create an administrator account from this unknown account?
If you do, create an account, log in into it and with Easy transfer (%windir%\system32\migwiz\migwiz.exe) create a settings transfer file. Then, on your account, import the settings. Move your data from the old account to the new one and then delete the old account.

johnhoh · 15 Sep 2016

Megahertz07 said:

Can you edit to create an administrator account from this unknown account?

This sounds like a good plan! But I cannot see how to edit the unknown account. If I right-click on it or left click or select change type, there does does not appear to be a way to edit it.

Megahertz07 · 15 Sep 2016

If you launch Easy transfer can you save settings from the unknown account?

johnhoh · 15 Sep 2016

I just tried Easy Transfer and the only account it showed up with was this single new account.

I also came across a technique for recovering an Unknown Account and tried that procedure, but since the old account was named Dad and so is the new account, it just said "account exists already". I suppose I could delete the new Dad account and try that procedure again to see if it tries to recover the old Dad account, but I'm not really wanting to delete this new account. May have to just give up. I was really hoping this was a super common issue that has already been worked through but I guess not. All I did was a simple sysprep generalize and win7 proceeded to make my former Dad account invisible and create a new empty Dad account with the same name. Pretty insane.

Megahertz07 · 15 Sep 2016

John, I've seen from the image you posted that your folders were created on 2009. And along this years you have a lot of trash.
If I were you I would do a clean install. There is nothing like a clean install.
I know that it takes a loooooong time to do it, but your computer will run faster and safer.
For the updates:
KB3125574 contains all the security and non-security fixes released since the release of Windows 7 SP1 that are suitable for general distribution, up through April 2016.
It’s single, Multi language, 488MB update file (msu). On a recent installation, you must have first to install KB3020369.