Win2000 to WinNT - My Documents has disappeared

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

John Meredith - 10 May 2004 11:20 GMT

Hi there,

Having trouble with a WinNT user's account that has been
moved from a Win2000 PC to a WinNT 4 OS. Essentially we're
moving hardware around to best use within the company.

The user seems to have updated his profile fine apart from
My Documents. I understand that the Documents and Settings
structure doesn't exist on NT, and the user has a roaming
profile on Windows 2003 Server. Email settings have
transferred without a glitch.

The problem is that My Documents doesn't point to anywhere
from the start menu. We've made backups of the docs folder
(even though it is present on the server) but where do I
have to go to get the start menu to link to a new, local
My Documents folder? Is this a registry issue? And does
anyone have information on other potential pitfalls
in "downgrading" to an NT system?

Many thanks in advance,

John Meredith
www.aperio.co.uk

Reply to this Message

Shawn Hopkins - 19 May 2004 17:59 GMT

The problem is that the ntuser.dat file on the server is
the user's regsitry hive for HKEY_CURRENT_USER, which
points to the My Documents folder. To fix this you will
have to logon as the user and go into the registry.

Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Explorer\Shell Folders

From there you can change the path. Keep in mind that it
is not the folder structure that is different between NT
and (2k,XP), it is also the HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry
hive in the ntuser.dat file that is also different. Best
thing to do is to setup a new profile based on the NT
structure, copy that to the server and than just copy over
the links and documents from the olde profile to the new
profile. This way everything will be consistent.

Shawn

>-----Original Message-----
>Hi there,
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
>www.aperio.co.uk
>.

Reply to this Message