Posted: 10/19/2009 2:23:09 PM EDT
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Corporate Environment. My place has many shared pit PC's with anywhere from 6 to close to 100 users on them. I am tired of having to manually transfer data and working with end users to get their profiles set back up on the new PC. With 3 shifts involved, it is just simply far too time-consuming having to chase down people and get them to meet me somewhere to log in so I can transfer data.
So, I am looking at a couple MS tools: Vista has a built in 'Easy Transfer' tool, but I fear that is not really what I need. They do have the User State Migration Tool, which definitely sounds like what I need. But, sounds like it involves a pretty good knowledge of scripting. My scripting skills are very old and rusty, and I was hoping to keep this off the radar since my situation at my site is fairly unique. I start putting in requests for Visual Studio and server/telecom support, and that's a lot of paperwork and meetings I'd have to deal with. So, Ideas? is the USMT the way to go? Is there a 3rd party/open source tool? Just write up my own scripts and bat files? I mentioned it to one of our programmers, and he said (in a near clone of movie-hacker style talk) 'I can whip up a script to do that in 15 minutes.' Optimally, what I am envisioning is run an app, window pops up, I type in Old PC Name, then type in New PC name, and walk away. Deploy the PC, and no one is the wiser, all the profiles and email settings, documents, favorites, etc are all transferred and working just fine. I get accolades for handing a multi-user refresh in record time. ETA: XP and Vista, and Lotus Notes. Going to be a lot of XP to Vista refreshes coming up real quick. Reason I'm looking into this... |
| Probably a 'nevermind' here. I spoke with a tech at another site in the environment that I know has many shared PC's, and he's actually already got a nearly complete script written up to do exactly what I need. heh. Communication between support teams. Who wudda thunk it? |
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Quoted:
You guys might want to setup roaming profiles if you have an active directory domain setup, you wouldn't have to reconfigure machines if someone logs onto a new machine every time. I wish we would! I dunno why we don't use roaming profiles, we are AD. I'm going through the other tech's script, and while it will help, there is still going to be a lot of manual work involved. :( So, I still might be looking for other options on this. |
| It really does make things a whole lot easier, at my old job I was assigned the task of converting our domain to an active directory, I configured all users to use roaming profiles while I was at it and after everything was setup, it ended up dramatically decreasing help desk call volume, more specifically during on call hours (during 2nd and 3rd shift). |