Let me preface this by saying I am not a Windows admin. I'm a Linux admin. But I wear many hats...
I have these laptops I'm migrating to be on our AD domain.
Details
- Windows 10
- Windows Server 2016
Each laptop has a local user with same username as in AD.
I'm basically just manually migrating user data from the local profile into the AD profile. Click and drag visible folders from local profile to Domain profile. Then recursively change the perms on the domain profile to allow Full Control to the domain user.
I tried several methods that would work for me on a Linux box that broke on Windows, such as deleting the Domain profile dir, copying the entire local profile as the name of the domain profile, and applying recursive Full Control to the newly created domain profile dir. This didn't work. I don't know enough about Windows to know why, though.
So I tried copying just the folders inside the local profile, and changing permissions on the destination. This seems to work, but I'm not confident this is not broken.
For example, the AppData directory. I'm not even sure what this AppData dir is for, except that it is (a) huge, (b) hidden by default, and (c) appears to store, well, app data.
Questions
- Do I need to migrate the AppData directory?
- What special precautions should I take if I do?
- What other things am I missing that are Really Important(TM)?
I have only three Windows laptops to support, and I don't have any Windows tools or options like Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT). Installing and operating something like that, or something larger and more complex, for only three laptops, is a non-starter.
