Migrating user profiles

[avatar user="Jamie Poindexter" size="thumbnail" align="left" link="file" /]byJamie Poindexter|Oct 21, 2021|Jamie's Tech Corner,Our blogIf you have ever migrated a user to Azure or even to a local profile from a local domain, you know it can be a pain to setup the user and move all of the data and personal settings over to the new profile which is blank when a new profile is created. Heavy users can take some time to get setup and working the way they are used too. A nifty utility can take a lot of the legwork out of this process.The program is called User Profile Wizard and is made by Forensit - https://www.forensit.com/downloads.htmlThe small program runs on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 as well. The utility doesn’t technically migrate or move anything. Instead, it configures the existing profile in-place to be either the local profile or Azure. If the user was already local and now is being added to the domain, it does that as well.The freeware edition does the basic migration to local, Azure or local domains. If you are needing the remote or push migrations or other features those are available in the paid edition. For most users the free one works perfectly fine. Head over to the downloads section and download the free version. Install the software under a local admin account that you have access too.

When you launch the software, you will first be able to view all profiles on the machine. Choose the active one that needs to be migrated.

Now is where we choose either Azure, Local, or a Domain account for the new profile. In this example we will choose to create a new local account. You will also enter the name of the user account. If this were Azure, you would use the email and if its Local Domain you would match the user as its in Active Directory. If you are choosing a local account, make sure the account already exists before clicking next.

The tool will now go to work in migrating everything over.

When done click on next and you will be forced to reboot the machine.Following the reboot, you should have the new user already selected and you can sign in under the new account.

As you can see the old profile is still on the PC. You can either delete it manually or leave it incase you need to revert for some reason.Some limitations or gotchas with the migration are you may have to remap network drives as they will need to reauthenticate with the server. Also, Chrome may ask to login to some sites as well before they are saved again. This is normal and usually a one-time process. Still much faster than rebuilding the profile yourself.