I recently had to upgrade more than 1500 desktop PCs running Windows 2000 and different Microsoft Office versions to Windows XP and Office 2003. I had to destroy the current file system instead of upgrading it from the previous OS for several reasons, including incompatibility problems between the old and new versions of some of the company's internal software. I needed a way to back up all the users' profiles on the PCs, then restore the profiles after installing the new XP and Office 2003 software.
When you have 1500 PCs, physically going to every PC to perform the upgrade is too time-consuming. I decided to back up the profiles on a network share, then restore the profiles from that share onto the PCs so that I could perform all the work remotely. I first looked for existing solutions. I discovered that XP offers the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, which lets you back up user profiles, store them on a network share, and restore them when needed. (For information about how to use the wizard, see the Microsoft article "Step-by-Step Guide to Migrating Files and Settings" at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/mgrtfset.mspx.) Although you can use this wizard on Win2K machines, it has some disadvantages. The wizard can backup only the profile of the currently logged on user. Consequently, you can't backup all the profiles that reside on one computer in one operation. More important, you have to run the wizard locally. Because I needed to migrate the profiles on remote machines, using the wizard wasn't an option. . . .
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