## PACT ProfileCopy Save and Restore Windows User Settings on Windows 95, 98 and NT!

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Philip Ahrens Editorials Some Ideas About PACT Search 12Ghosts.com: Did you find what you were looking for? E-mail Philip Ahrens. MCSE MCSD MCP+I MCT Team #3 NT Workstation PACT supports • Walker's Watchguard • Citizens for Cycles • Heidelberg AKTUELL | Designed for Windows 95/98/NT. (Download all 12Ghosts 1.3 MB, 08-Dec-98) Introducing ProfileCopy Things You Should Know Important!!! FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions How are you doing backups? Screen Shot E-mail Technical Support Order License pick ### Download PACT ProfileCopy 99.1b 280 KB, 26-Nov-98, Self-extracting, with Setup and Uninstall. ### Introducing PACT ProfileCopy With PACT ProfileCopy you can save and restore your user profile. A profile includes all user defined settings in Windows like your wallpaper, desktop settings, sound and cursor schemes, desktop icons and layout, start menu items, and so on. And you can add folders and registry keys yourself! What's new, it does not only save the registry settings like a normal backup program, it also copies the files referred to by these settings. The wallpaper bitmap, the screen saver, the sound files and cursors themselves are copied to a new folder. You then only need to handle this one folder. Use PACT ProfileCopy instead of a full backup. No need to backup the complete Windows folder every time but save your personal settings only. You can copy user profiles from one user to another, to a new computer, between your PC and your notebook, from Windows 95 to a fresh installation of Windows 98, and even when going from Windows 95 to NT! ### Things you Should Know IMPORTANT: Copying profiles is rather complicated, as far as I can tell. Please read the following paragraphs and the Not Yet Implemented paragraph below before using ProfileCopy! Also, the FAQ contains a lot of helpful explanations! General Issues • Verify the system folder settings before saving these folders. For example if one of these folders is set to "C:\", your complete disk would be copied. • After changing system folder settings it is required to log off and back on before saving or restoring system folders. Windows must recognize the new settings. • This Beta has not been tested with network paths. • The system folders "Programs" and "Startup" will be saved twice if they are below the Start Menu folder. However, this will probably make up less than 50 KB. • Windows 95: The icons for My Computer, Network, Recycle, etc. will only be restored in Windows 95 if Microsoft Plus! is installed. • Shortcuts are not changed. If the target path does not exist on the restore platform, the shortcut will not work. This is the nature of shortcuts. • Sound and Cursor files will always be restored to %WinDir%\Sounds or %WinDir%\Media. This is by intend because the paths should be "relative" and exist on every Windows installation (95, 98, NT). - To backup a folder and restore it at the exact same "absolute" path, add it to the lower list of "Files, Folders and Registry Keys". • For certain screen savers additional files might be necessary. For example, the popular Boogie Baby screen saver would need baby.avi and baby.mid. You need to add these files in the lower list box to have them copied. That's also necessary for screen saver settings if you wish to save them. For example, if you use the Marquee screen saver, you'd have to add the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Screen Saver.Marquee. • Profile.ini is not a Windows system file. It is created new and used only by ProfileCopy. • Don't forget to log off and back on after restoring for the restored settings to take effect. #### Items in the Lower List Box • You can add your own registry keys to be copied in the lower list box. However, you should know what you are doing. These keys will not be checked but just copied/restored. • Folders and Registry Keys will always be restored according to the entry in profile.ini, disregarding if they appear in the list box or not (because they would not on another PC). To deselect certain entries, delete them manually in the Profile-Path\profile.ini. • Files referred to by registry keys in the lower list box will not be copied, only the keys themselves. • It is not recommended to save/restore the complete HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry key (nor any of the main hives), other then for backup purposes for one single machine. See the FAQ for detailed information. #### Different Language Versions • On language versions other than English, the [>] buttons for Sound, Mouse, and Keyboard do not work. Please use Start - Settings - Control Panel to change these settings. • Save and restore on different language versions, for example, saving on an English Windows and restoring on a French Windows: • The system folders "Programs" and "Startup" might be restored twice, once with their saved names and once under the currently set names. • The desktop icon layout can not be restored since the file type names are internationally different. ### Solved Issues Missing Shortcuts v98.5 Beta 2.0 checked for all necessary system folders and tried to set up defaults. Unfortunately, the routine doing so was not smart enough to respond to every existing situation. Some beta testers reported missing shortcuts in their Start menu or a cluttered desktop. That's why we pulled out the routine and now merely provide a warning to the user if a system folder is not set up correctly. If you have any problems with your system folders, you might want to look into this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ User Shell Folders Verify the correct paths for all values you find in there. The default paths are usually c:\windows\profiles\<your log on name>\<sys folder>. Important: After changing the paths here, you need to log off and back on for Windows to recognise the changes. ### Not Yet Implemented (...because we want a stable version first, and the multitude of features later.) Save/Restore: - Settings for Explorer - Options - View - Toolbar on/off - view details - Taskbar Properties - Windows Applets Options: - Notepad Options - RegEdit Options - etc. - Settings for other applications - Support for %variable% directories Log File - no more MessageBoxes, instead a log file and LED display - display each single save/restore action in LED - ProfileCopy should accept the profile path on the command line (right now, it does accept /s for save and /r for restore). Usage - option: copy folders without subfolders - enabled/disabled check boxes for Folders and Registry Keys list entries - display during copying files, cancel the process. - Test on how many data are going to be copied, display - calculate Time remaining - Context help, ToolTips We always enhance our software to give you the most powerful tools available. Please let us know if you encounter any difficulties not listed here. Thank you! ### FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions What is a profile? All user defined settings in Windows are stored in a special database, called the Registry. Settings included are, for example, your selected wallpaper, current sound and cursor scheme, desktop colors, mouse and keyboard settings. And also the contents of the Start and Programs menu, the Desktop and Favorites folder, and more. "It's tedious to set up all parameters each time you install Windows..." It's tedious to set up all parameters and copy all according files each time you install a fresh version of Windows, either because of updating to a new version, cleaning up, or beta testing! Transferring all settings for example to a new computer, or between a PC and a notebook is almost impossible. Your administrator may assign you a new user account with a fresh profile, so all your settings are gone. With ProfileCopy you can now save and restore your profile easily. You may also include several settings for applications, and your documents. How can I test ProfileCopy? (1) Save the profile, (2) then create a new test user on your computer. Log on as this user, start ProfileCopy, (3) and restore the profile. Again, log off and back on after restoring and check if all settings were copied as expected. Make sure you have a full backup of your complete system before using ProfileCopy! What is the difference between a profile and a "Microsoft Plus!" theme? You can only install a theme, that is, "put settings in". When you change settings or add files, these changes will not change the theme, but the profile. In other words, you can not "get settings out". With ProfileCopy you can. Why is "ProfileCopy.exe" always copied to the profile path? You may want to restore your profile on another PC or a fresh installation of Windows. No need to install ProfileCopy again, it's already in your profile folder, ready to use. Probably one day there will be a 2.0 version of ProfileCopy. We prefer not to guarantee backwards compatibility over the next 50 years. The profile.ini format might and indeed will change. But there, for you, this is no problem because the appropriate version was copied into the backup path! Why don't you just backup the whole (nt)user.dat (that is, HKEY_CURRENT_USER)? You can, however, I don't suggest it: 1. ProfileCopy has been designed to be able to copy settings between Windows 95 and Windows NT, and different PCs. Many settings are different in Windows 95 and Windows NT. You can not copy the whole (nt)user.dat to another installation, it may render your system unusable. 2. ProfileCopy also copies files referred to by registry keys, for example your wallpaper bitmap, sound and cursor files. The keys and files are restored correctly on another machine, even if the Windows folder has another name. 3. The contents of system folders (Start Menu, Desktop, etc.) are copied from and restored to their according paths. 4. To transfer settings between PCs, the same applications would need to be installed on both PCs. You can (and we encourage advanced users to) add specific registry keys for installed applications if you know that it works. 5. The paths saved/restored and referred to by registry keys are probably different on different machines and installations of Windows. You would need to search and replace all paths in the registry after copying. 6. All keys in (nt)user.dat need to be closed to save or restore. This is hardly ever the case, except before booting or logging on. For example, Windows NT allows restoring the Last Known Good only before loading the system, a roaming profile is copied before logon. Restoring HKEY_CURRENT_USER completely may not work because keys are locked. 7. There are better and quicker utilities to only backup the complete registry if you feel like doing so: the Windows Backup, REGSAVE and REGREST from the Windows Resource Kit, and several other backup programs. Do you recommend to include HKEY_CURRENT_USER completely? Just for backup purposes, yes. To transfer profiles between PCs, no. To transfer profiles between users on the same machine, not really, this depends on the applications installed. Can I start ProfileCopy per batch file? You can specify two command line options, /s for save and /r for restore. However, in this version error messages are displayed as message boxes. We will implement an error log file in the next version. What's the difference to a full backup? Not all Windows settings are saved per default. The main purpose to use ProfileCopy is to copy profiles from one user or PC to another and between Windows 95, 98 and NT. Application settings are not saved by default but you can add as many registry settings, documents and folders as you need. To backup your complete data, please use a full featured "first" backup program regularly. Can I backup the whole registry? You can backup every registry key by adding it to the lower list box. But I wouldn't say it makes sense, however. For example, keys below HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE are only used by applications installed on the machine. If those applications are not installed, why would you need those settings? And different users on the same machine all access the same HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. No need to copy it. As mentioned above, I would recommend to backup all data and the complete registry regularly with your preferred backup program. Many backup programs today come free with Windows or a new hard drive, that's why ProfileCopy was not designed to mimic a full backup program. How long has ProfileCopy been tested? The first version was out in mid May 1998. We use ProfileCopy on our own machines excessively, while developing ProfileCopy and during our daily work. At no time any settings were lost. The developers themselves would be quite upset loosing any files or settings. ProfileCopy is downloaded by about 30 users per day. The only problem so far occured on a few machines with version 98.5 Beta 2.0 at the end of May. Although quite disturbing, no data were lost. The responsible routine had been pulled out since version Beta 2.1 published two days later. The release candidate 98.6 Beta 3.0 was out on June 9th, with no serious reports so far. After four weeks and with minmal changes we called this 98.7 Final. This seems to do it's job as intended for all users. However, please take all precautions you can, read the FAQ and the Known Issues carefully. Test ProfileCopy on test-user profiles, always save the current profile before you restore a new one. Backup your data regularly, and make sure you have a recent full backup before trying new software, including ProfileCopy. Don't risk anything! ### License This program is a test version for evaluation only. You can use the software for evaluation purposes without charge for a maximum of 30 days. If you use this software after the 30 day evaluation period a registration fee for a full version is required. How to Order a License License Agreement ### Support Should you have any questions please contact support@12Ghosts.com. We stand committed to solving your issues within hours! We're also running a UBB support forum where other users might already have asked your question. You're welcome to join the discussion! And you can take part on the future development of the 12Ghosts family: Send us your thoughts on features and usage. We really appreciate your feedback! ### Screen Shot of PACT ProfileCopy |
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BackGhosts 2ndBackup - airbag for your data ProfileCopy - copy user profiles, including the referenced files! Save Layout - desktop icon positions, auto-save and restore Major Update!!! Timer - application scheduler, once, recurring, after logon, reminder, moonphase Do It Now JumpReg - create bookmarks/ shortcuts to registry keys, ZD: SetTextColor - change the desktop icon text and background colors, also transparent! ShellX context menu extension for user defined commands in the right-click menu of files and folders! ShutDown - the most powerful terminating utility! Shutdown per shortcut, key, or your own programs! Major Update!!! Make it Easy DeskTOP Desktop simulator - application launcher with amazing behavior... QuickStart - open system folders and tools quicker! Major Update!!! It's ShowTime! - the ultimate clock, alarm, hour signal, sticky notes, more than 70 options. Major Update!!! WinBzzzz - size and position windows per click How to order a license online, free phone, fax, e-mail, or mail @ E-mail technical support, questions and suggestions
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