Ever have a user that needed to move to another computer in the office? How about a user whose PC you needed to replace? You could go down the road of simply copying their My Documents folder to get their files to the new system, but I’ll spell out how you can copy their entire Windows XP user profile to the new PC without any special tools. All you need is local admin rights on both systems and a network between them.

I’m a big fan of doing things right, but using the easiest method. Here’s the simplest way to move a user’s Windows profile to another PC. In these instructions, the user’s original system is named SystemA, the new PC will be called SystemB. We’ll be moving a user with the userid of JDoe in the example.

First, we’ll need to copy the registry information that tells Windows where to find the user’s profile.

1.Run regedit.exe

2. Navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

3. You’ll see a list of UIDs in the left pane, navigate down them until you find the UID with the ProfileImagePath property in the right pane for the user whose profile you are copying. For our example, as highlighted below, the ProfileImagePath would be %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\JDoe*

4. Highlight the UID folder and click File, Export. Save it to the root of C: on the destination PC, SystemB in our example, with the UNC path of
\\SystemB\c$\jdoe.reg

Second, we’ll need to copy the actual profile

5. On the SystemA PC, login as a user other than JDoe, whose profile you wish to copy. Right-click My Computer, then click Properties

6. Click the Advanced tab and then the Settings button in the User Profiles section

7. Highlight the User whose profile you are copying and click Copy To.

8. In the resulting box enter the UNC path of the destination PCs documents and settings folder, For our example it would be \\destination\c$\documents and settings\JDoe   Make sure the username in that path string exactly matches the username from the ProfileImagePath in step 3!

9. Click the Permitted to Use button and enter the user’s userid, in our example JDoe . This will setup the necessary permissions on the destination PC, SystemB.then click ok on that box

10. Click Ok. This will start the copy to SystemB. Depending on the speed of your network and the size of the profile, it may take a good bit of time. Wait until it finishes before going to the last step.

11. Last step, and most easily forgotten! On the destination system, SystemB, login as a user other than the user whose profile you are copying an double click the .reg file you exported to it in step 4. Click yes, or OK that you want to enter the information into the registry. You MUST complete this step prior to the user whose profile you are copying logs in!

After step 11, you are finished. All of the user’s mail settings, desktop settings, and program preferences will have been transferred to the new system!

*If the user’s userid has changed since the profile was originally created, the profile path will include the original userid, not the current userid.