Hi Wanda, hmmm... I hear what you are saying, but we have a situation where a good portion of our 600 windows TSM clients can't backup the ntuser.dat, and sometimes the usrclass.dat, files even if the user IS logged off.... We have performed numerous trials on this, and it seems that windows sometimes maintains the lock on these files even if the user is logged off.
We search the actlog each morning for messages like the one below, and then send an email to the user, which makes the user puzzled, which results in additional work for us... : 2002-02-12 09:44:03.000000 LIGHTBUG.NI.COM ANE4987E Error processing '\\ightning\c$\Documents and Settings\gooney \NTUSER.DAT': the object is in use by another process Keith Kwiatek National Institute of Standards and Technology ----- Original Message ----- From: "Prather, Wanda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 4:22 PM Subject: Re: Is it ok to exclude ntuser.dat, and usrclass.dat ???? > I also found the information you refer to in the Windows client manual, and > I DISAGREE with it. > I will explain why I think so, in the hope that someone can correct me! > > I agree you can exclude NTUSER.DAT.LOG and USRCLASS.DAT.LOG. (I think these > files are only used to journal in-flight changes to profiles, and can't be > used after a restore.) But there are cases where I believe you should NOT > exclude NTUSER.DAT and USRCLASS.DAT. > > MOST of the time, I think it is ok to exclude NTUSER.DAT (& USRCLASS.DAT for > Win2K) on Windows SERVERS, but NOT on WinNT Wokstation or Win2KPro. > > NTUSER.DAT is the file that stores what is generally called your "user > profile". These are customization settings that you choose for yourself in > Windows and Windows applications. The info in this file is loaded into the > HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry key when you are logged on to Windows. Under > Win2K, even MORE of your customization is stored in USRCLASS.DAT. > > The most obvious item of customization that is included, should you want to > know for testing, is your wallpaper. But, depending on your levels of > Exchange/Outlook, some of those settings are stored here as well. And even > MORE customization can get stored this way, if an application chooses to > store it there. > > While you are logged on to a Windows machine, the NTUSER.DAT & USRCLASS.DAT > files are locked by Windows and cannot be backed up by TSM. You will see > errors to that effect in dsmerror.log, and it annoys people to constantly > have those files show up as errors. And, TSM has a bypass - since TSM can't > back up these files (or any other open registry files), TSM gets a copy of > the user profile information out of the registry for ALL LOGGED ON USERS, > and saves it into the c:\adsm.sys directory structure as part of the > registry backup. So the copy is there in adsm.sys after a full restore; you > can drag it back to its proper location to restore your profile. > > Now, if you are NOT logged on to your system at the time it backs up, TSM > will back up NTUSER.DAT just fine, like any other file. And you can restore > that file with TSM, should you need to. If you are trying to do a > bare-metal restore, you can use a backed up copy of NTUSER.DAT from its > original location, OR one that you drag out of adsm.sys. A good copy of > either one works. > > SO, where things get tricky, is if you exclude NTUSER.DAT and USRCLASS.DAT, > and you AREN"T logged on at the time of backup, so that TSM doesn't copy the > information during the registry backup. In this case, how do you restore > your profile? Answer: you don't. Also, you may find that people have > established multiple accounts on their system - each one has its own > NTUSER.DAT file. And if you exclude NTUSER.DAT, you will get backups via > the registry ONLY for those that are logged on at the time of the backup. > > If you are backing up a lot of workstations, you just can't guarantee that > people either WILL or WON"T be logged on for sure. SO if you are backing up > workstations with TSM, DON"T exclude the NTUSER.DAT & USRCLASS.DAT files. > Then you know for sure that your profiles are backed up either as part of > the registry backup, or as a flat file, no matter how many profiles exist on > the workstation and how many are logged on at backup time. > > Now this information probably doesn't apply, even for workstations, if your > site uses ROAMING profiles. (Although I haven't worked with them, I think > in that case your profile is stored on a Windows server, and downloaded to > you no matter where you log on. ) And in environments where your desktops > are highly standardized, you may not care. But in a research environment > like we have here, we have MOSTLY power users, and desktops have lots of > customization; in this type of environment, users are NOT happy if you > claim you can restore their systems, but lose all their customization. > > Now, if you are backing up only Windows SERVERS, the question is, what > profiles do you care about? For most servers, nobody cares at all. > Usually, the only people logging on to the Windows server console are logged > on as Administrator, or they log on under their own accounts but use the > default profile, without doing any significant amount of customization. If > you don't care about your customization, then you can exclude NTUSER.DAT. > You may not get a backup of everyone's profile, but if you restore the > machine and someone logs in and their profile hasn't been restored, they > just get a copy of the DEFAULT profile, same as when they logged in the > first time (that's what the default profile is for). > > BTW, we back up about 350 Win2K desktops, 50 WinNT desktops, 20 NT servers. > And we can restore them down to the last icon, with all user customization. > So I've done a LOT of restoring profiles. Most of the information I have > about profiles has been learn-by-doing, if anyone has a better explanation > or definitive documentation, PLEASE contribute! Glad for anyone to shoot it > down if they can provide better info. > > So there's my 2 cents (taxed or not taxed; although most days I find my job > very taxing.... :>) > > ************************************************************************ > Wanda Prather > The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab > 443-778-8769 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" - > Scott Adams/Dilbert > ************************************************************************ > > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Keith Kwiatek [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 10:12 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Is it ok to exclude ntuser.dat, and usrclass.dat ???? > > > Is is ok to exclude the below files? I found this tivloi link that seems to > indicate such: > > http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/datenhaltung/adsm/link/tsm-v42-books/win > c/ans60014.htm > > exclude "*:\documents and settings\...\ntuser.dat.LOG" > exclude "*:\documents and settings\...\ntuser.dat" > exclude "*:\documents and settings\...\usrclass.dat.LOG" > exclude "*:\documents and settings\...\usrclass.dat" >
