How do you rebuild a Windows 7 user profile on a PC joined to an Active Directory domain and why would you want to do this?

Question

a question I was asked at a job interview today. Don't think I was on-target with my answer.

How do you rebuild a Windows 7 user profile on a PC joined to an Active Directory domain and why would you want to do this?

Solution

How:

• Rename or delete the profile folder. In Windows 7 its in C:\Users\Username. If its a roaming profile, then its where its being pointed to in the users properties

• Rename or delete the registry key so that Windows isnt looking for a profile that doesn't exist (and end up giving the user a temp profile). Browse to the reg key showing below, and find the SID for that user (by selecting the SID key and looking at the ProfileImagePath value.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Why:

Corruption of the HKCU hive (ntuser.dat). virus, inability to logon etc.

Comments

[joeqwerty]

1. Log on to the machine as an administrator and delete the user profile in question. 2. Log on as the user in order to create a new profile. 3. Because the profile is damaged/corrupted, etc.

[Jman]

Thanks for the feedback. Seems like a pretty easy answer in retrospect.

[Jman]

You made my day. My answer wasn't that far off from this, so maybe there's still hope. Thanks!