Windows XP Logon Profiles

When I first setup this PC I accidentally logged in as a local user and then installed all the apps and tweaked, etc then realized I wasn't logged onto the domain. Oops. I was crushed. I knew I had a serious problem.

You see, Windows NT, and by extension Windows XP, has this odd idea of a user and what constitutes a different user. Logging into the domain under my user name is a totally different account from logging into the local machine with the same exact name. So each of these 'users' gets a different settings, different home directory, etc. So now I switch to logging into the domain, which is a totally new local account and from which I can not access any of my apps or settings.

No sweat, I 'just' have to copy the old profile to the new profile.

Except...

I can't do this as either the source or destination user. I can't be the source because you get a warning that you can't copy from a currently logged in account and, what they don't tell you, you can't do it from the target because half the settings won't really be copied over, so I go to a 3rd account to copy everything over. Which works.

Except...

For both Firebird and Thunderbird which use absolute path settings in their configurations. They also ignore the value of the HOME environment variable and using your Windows home directory. Which is hard coded. And changes. For each new user. Which Windows now thinks I am.

The solution is to start each program, create new profiles, copy over the newly created profiles with the old profiles then hand edit the .js file to reflect the new hard coded paths. Which I was able to do. Edit the files that is. Because VIM honors the HOME environment variable and picked up the right .vimrc file, and got all the right settings, like it should, so I could edit, but I digress...

And now, an hour later, I'm finally done.

All of this because everything worked perfectly fine, but for some reason because I was not logged onto the domain, I couldn't print. But that was it, everything else worked fine. A side effect of not logging into the domain in oh, 3 months, is that my account was locked out, so even before all this rigamarole I had to get my domain account reset just so I could logon.

Sometimes our only purpose in life is to serve as an example to others. This is one of those times.

Always logon to your domain.