Q:

Transfer Active Directory account profile and settings to local account

I have seen plenty of questions about doing it the other way around, but my problem is this:
I have an Active Directory account that can't log in anymore, because the DC is down (and not going back up soon, and not with the old accounts, which got corrupted).
There are user settings that I want to scavenge on the hard drive. User settings like Outlook configuration, installed programs, and so on and so forth. What should I do to achieve a "working copy" of the old account? Do I have to go and have fun with the registry?
The system I'm working on is Windows XP,I'm logging in locally through an administrative account, and have no possibility of scavenging data from the server, I have to play locally.

A:

Quick-and-dirty solution:

create a local user, let's call it "NewUser"
log in as NewUser (so that a new default profile is created)
reboot (needed to "unlock" profile files, logging off is not enough)
log in as Administrator
make NewUser member of the Administrators group
make sure you can see system and hidden files in Windows Explorer
copy everything from C:\Documents and Settings\DamagedProfile to C:\Documents and Settings\NewUser
log in as NewUser
enjoy

The key here is making NewUser a local administrator, so you're not going to run into any permission issue. If you want to "do things right", you should set appropriate permissions on both the profile files and the lost user's own Registry (which is stored in the profile's NTUSER.DAT and needs to be opened by loading it into REGEDIT and re-ACLed appropriately).

