http://support.microsoft.

com/kb/812339/en-us

Note Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps. Back to the top

Create a New User Account

To create a new user account, follow these steps: 1. Start the computer in Safe Mode, and then restart the computer. a. After the Power On Self Test (POST), press the F8 key. b. On the Windows Advanced Options menu, use the ARROW keys to select Safe Mode, and then press ENTER. c. When you are prompted to select the operating system to start, select Windows XP <edition>, where <edition> is the edition of Windows XP that you have installed, and then press ENTER. 2. Log on as Administrator. . On the "To begin, click your user name" screen, click Administrator. a. Type the administrator password, and then press ENTER. Note In some cases, the Administrator password may be set to a blank password. In this case, do not type a password before you press ENTER. 3. In Control Panel, click User Accounts. 4. Create a new user account. Windows makes a new directory for the account in the Documents and Settings folder. 5. Quit the User Accounts tool, and then restart the computer.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811151/

Create a new user profile on the domain computer

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Log on as the Administrator or as a user with administrator credentials. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. Click User Accounts. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Advanced. In the left pane, click the Users folder. On the Action menu, click New User. Enter the appropriate user information, and then click Create.

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Create a new user profile on the workgroup computer

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Log on as the Administrator or as a user with administrator credentials. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. Click User Accounts. Under Pick a task, click Create a new account. Type a name for the user information, and then click Next. Click an account type, and then click Create Account.

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Copy files to the new user profile

1. Log on as a user other than the user whose profile you are copying files to or from. 2. In Windows Explorer, click Tools, click Folder Options, click the View tab, click Show hidden files and folders, click to clear the Hide protected operating system files check box, and then click OK. 3. Locate the C:\Documents and Settings\Old_Username folder, where C is the drive on which Windows XP is installed, and Old_Username is the name of the profile you want to copy user data from. 4. Press and hold down the CTRL key while you click each file and subfolder in this folder, except the following files: o Ntuser.dat o Ntuser.dat.log o Ntuser.ini 5. On the Edit menu, click Copy. 6. Locate the C:\Documents and Settings\New_Username folder, where C is the drive on which Windows XP is installed, and New_Username is the name of the user profile that you created in the "Create a New User Profile" section. 7. On the Edit menu, click Paste. 8. Log off the computer, and then log on as the new user. Note You must import your e-mail messages and addresses to the new user profile before you delete the old profile. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 313055 Mail folders, address book, and e-mail messages are missing after you upgrade to Microsoft Windows XP This might be what you are looking for. 1) login as administrator or user with admin rights. 2) open Windows Explorer, navigate to Docs & Settings, and copy all profiles you want to external harddrive, network share, etc. *on copy if you get ntuser.dat in use error, restart and try again.

3) open regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and export entire profilelist or each account individually (will be .reg file). 4) login in to new machine as administrator or user with admin rights. 5) copy profile(s) to Docs & Settings on new machine 6) run .reg file(s) by double-clicking and adding to registry. 7) re-assign permissions: right click on user profile --> Properties, Security tab, Add button, add user and hit ok, select user and check full control check box then hit Advanced button. On Advanced window, uncheck "inherit from parent..." and check "Replace permissions...". 8) logoff and have user login The One-Size-Fits-All Approach Let's try a step-by-step example. Suppose Jake once used a local account to log on to a machine named Old, and he'll now use a different local account to log on to a machine named New. Here's how to move his profile from Old to New. 1. Copy Jake's old profile folder from Old to New. The %USERPROFILE% environment variable identifies the location of Jake's profile. (You must log on as Jake for this method to work.) Alternatively, look in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\SID\ProfileImagePath subkey, where SID is Jake's SID. If you need to determine which SID is Jake's, use GetSID, which you can download from http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/default.asp. GetSID's syntax is a bit odd:
getsid

where accountname is the account's name and accountsource is the name of the machine that contains the account. Having the account name and machine name appear twice isn't a typoboth names must appear twice. In Jake's case, you would type
getsid \\Old jake \\Old jake

Now you have the SID and therefore the correct registry subkey. 2. After you find Jake's profile, copy it to the location in which New keeps profiles probably Documents and Settings, so his copied profile now sits in C:\documents and settings\jake. 3. Create Jake's new local account on New. Log on as Jake, then log off. Log back on to the system as a local administrator, and use GetSID to find Jake's new SID. 4. Open Jake's folder in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Double-click the ProfileImagePath subkey and replace

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its contents with \%systemdrive%\documents and settings\jake. Close your registry editor. To fix the file and directory permissions, right-click the Jake directory and choose Properties. On the Security tab, add a permission for Jake in the typical way: Click the Add button, then choose the local Jake account. Back on the Security tab, give Jake full control by clicking the box under Allow next to Full Control. Close the dialog boxes. Start up regedt32 (in Win2K or NT) or regedit (in Windows Server 2003 or XP). Navigate to the HKEY_USERS hive. In regedt32, click Registry, Load Hive; in regedit, click File, Load Hive. In the Load Hive dialog box, navigate to C:\documents and settings\jake. Inside that folder, select ntuser.dat and click OK. A second Load Hive dialog box asks you to fill in a Key Name text field. Enter Jake and click OK. On your registry editor's main screen, open the HKEY_USERS hive. In regedt32, click the Jake folder and choose Security, Permissions; in regedit, right-click the Jake folder and choose Permissions. Click Add and add a new permission entry for Jake. Click OK to return to the Permissions for dialog box. Give Jake full control over his registry subkeys by clicking the box under Allow next to Full Control, then click OK to return to the registry editor's main screen. Now that you're finished with the modifications, you need to write the changes back to the file. To do so, click the HKEY_USERS\Jake folder. In regedt32, click Registry, Unload Hive; in regedit, select File, Unload Hive. Choose Yes to confirm the action. Exit your registry editor.