User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

[QUOTE=Kari;3041421]

Kieran28 said:

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I think your best shot would be to find time to do this from scratch in one session, not shutting down or letting the PC sleep every now and then.

I agree. I think I'll start from scratch this weekend and try to get it done in one shot. Difficult with 3 kids and a full time job. 9-11pm is usually the only window I get for PC tinkering. :P

Kari said:

Kieran28 said:

Difficult with 3 kids and a full time job. 9-11pm is usually the only window I get for PC tinkering. :P

You are talking to a divorced man (multiple times, each times happily!), first divorce when I was 23 (30 years ago) when kids were just 2 years and other 6 months old, no more kids, never since lived with kids under the same roof, retired insomniac online 8 to 24 hours a day.

That being said, I don't know what you mean with "difficult to find time"? .

LOL, yes, everyone has their struggles. I don't judge.
Thanks again for all your help. Very much appreciated. I'll post back if/when I'm finally successful.

BTW you might consider adding a note to your "old school" tutorial explaining what happens when/if the PC sleeps while in audit mode, and what to do about it, as well as a note cautioning against multiple re-boots.

Kieran

Well, I'm currently running the backup/disk image to a Blu-ray disc. So far so good. I think what probably happened last time, was that I had installed some program that ran a service that sysprep didn't like. As you've said, sysprep doesn't like to share. I'm not sure which one was the culprit, but that's my guess. I was trying to get as many of my standard programs installed before doing the image, but I think I went a bit too far. :) Two that I can think of that run services are MCEBuddy (awesome, btw, if you use WMC for TV/DVR) and Media Center itself, which I ran and configured for cable TV. There might have been another or two, but I'm betting it was something like that.

So anyway, I now am (or will be soon) at the point where I've got an image of the system, but have not yet set up any user profiles or moved the user directory. I have not yet connected the HDD. So far the system only knows the SSD. My plan is, once the imaging is complete, to run sysprep again and then shutdown. Connect the HDD, then boot to audit mode. I'll do a final check that there aren't any system folders on the HDD (any sure fire ways to do that?) and then follow your instructions to move the users folder to the HDD, then finish the install & setup per your old school tutorial, and finish setting up the rest of my software.
Does this sound good? Any other tips or precautions?
Thanks,
Kieran

Kari said:

I might be late with this:

If you do the image after sysprep command has been run with /quit switch, still in Audit Mode, simply shutdown the PC from Start Menu (no sysprep).

Now connect the HDD and boot. Windows returns to Audit Mode automatically.

How is this possible? If I last ran sysprep (GUI) with the OOBE and quit options (which I did in order to create the image), then when I shut down, wouldn't it boot to OOBE?

Any sysprep run AFTER the image and BEFORE the HDD is connected is in your case totally useless.

Why useless? I guess I'm not clear on the real purpose behind using sysprep. I thought it was to place the system into audit mode, in order to install software before setting up users, or to take the system out of audit mode (e.g. to run backup/image).
Related question: say I booted to OOBE, then changed my mind and wanted to do some more work in audit mode. Couldn't I just ctrl-shift-f3 to reboot into audit mode? Does that actually place the system into audit mode, or does it just reboot and you have to run sysprep to get into audit mode. My guess is that ctrl-shift-f3 reboots to audit mode, and sysprep gui is just used to tell the system to enter audit mode again upon reboot.

Thanks for any clarification. I'm mostly just curious about these things.

Anyway, FYI, what I did was after the image finished, I ran sysprep gui and set it to audit/quit and then shutdown and went to bed. I figured with the image successfully created I could always re-start there, if the next boot proved problematic. :)

Less is sometimes more :).

I couldn't agree more with that!

No worries, Kari. At least all your previous information was consistent enough that I knew better when you did mis-type! :)

So here's the current problem:
I am currently going through my HDD, and there are indeed a couple of folders left from the previous system, including... Programdata! (duh). Also there is a user folder left. I cannot delete either of these, because they are both demanding administrator privileges from the previous system (which now no longer exists.)
Is there a way around this?
Thanks...
Kieran