Unlike in the earlier versions of Windows, copying the default user profile properties to other new or existing user profiles is not an easy task. Windows 7 users, especially administrators, have been faced with problems while propagating profile changes to all users accessing a particular system. Be it the built-in administrator profile or the current user / default profile, the “copy to” button is disabled (grayed out). Creating roaming network profiles also seems to have inherited the same copy problem.
Several solutions / registry hacks have been posted to resolve the issue, but then not all seem to work. Using “sysprep” to create multiple images will not be of much help when there are hundreds of profiles requiring regular updates.
Here is a simple workaround to this issue that has worked for many users.
- First of all, ensure that your UAC settings do not interfere with the process.
- Using a free utility called the “Windows Enabler”, you’ll be able to enable the grayed copy button on the profile UI. Download the Windows Enabler 1.1 from the web and ensure that the “Enablerdll.dll” and the “Windows Enabler.exe” files reside in the same folder.
- Launch the Windows Enabler by right clicking the .exe and selecting the “Run as Administrator” option.
- Launch the User Profile UI and select the required profile for which the “copy” button is disabled. Activate the Enabler from the System/ Notification tray by clicking on it, status should read “On”. Get back to the User Profile UI and click on the control to be enabled, the “Copy to” button, in this case.
- Once the button is enabled, proceed with copying the required user profiles. Remember to switch off the Windows Enabler by clicking on it once again.
Although the process is simple, you’re still bound to run into a few problems even after copying the profiles. A few of the details go missing, and that you will have to correct manually.
Custom desktop display settings such as the background wallpaper, themes, as well as documents etc. are not copied to the new profile.
You could create a folder for each common item such as wallpaper etc. applicable to all users under the “Public” or “All Users” folder and copy the contents to it so that you don’t duplicate the data for each profile.
If you require specific desktop applications to be copied to the default profile, create the required folder structure within the “AppData\Local\” parent folder specific to the default user, and copy the corresponding folders from the source user profile.
An alternate way to enforce standard appearance is to use the Group Policy to set the background etc. However, using the Windows Enabler to copy profiles throws up one more challenge – notifications from the “Action Center” will be received by each user. Setting a Local Policy could help tide over the issue for the time being, but the same can also resolved using the Group Policy.
Once you are familiar with the standard steps that are repeatable, you could create a script to repeat the job.
Despite these steps, contents and size of source and destination folders are bound to differ due to content for backward compatibility, user specific data etc, however the solution works.
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