[Samba] How to keep local profiles when joining domain?

[Nash Computer Technology]

Hi

I hope someone can help
  We currently have Windows 
XP Professional PCs that logon to an old Novell Netware 
3.12 server.  We’re just using the standard Windows 
Netware client, and each user has a Windows XP User 
account and password that matches their Novell one.  
When they logon to Windows, they are automatically 
authenticated to Novell.

However, we are now in the final stages of deploying a 
Samba server to replace the Novell one.  The Samba 
server is configured as a Primary Domain Controller, and 
seems to be working fine.  We do not wish to use roaming 
profiles, so the profiles will be held locally on each PC.

We wanted to test the migration of modifying the PC 
network clients to login to the new server, and have cloned 
a hard drive.  I haven’t played with this myself, but we’re 
unsure how to join the new domain, such that the existing 
profiles (eg desktop layout, applications, etc etc) are 
retained for each user.  When we simply change the PC 
properties to join the domain, we lose the users’ settings.  
For example, if we have a user named Mike who is logging 
on to our new domain of scodomain, it creates a profile 
under ‘My Documents & Settings’ named mike.scodomain.  
There is already a profile named ‘mike’.  Both users have 
administrative access on the PC.  We’ve tried creating and 
logging on as another administrative user then copying the 
contents of the profiles folder from mike to mike.scodomain 
(including hidden files), but we don’t get the settings that 
mike has.

I’d really appreciate some pointers on this.  It must be easy 
(there again, it’s Microsoft
) I think we’ve looked at right-
clicking on My Computer, Properties, User accounts, 
Profiles (or something like that) and copying profiles.  Also, 
the administrative tool in the Control Panel.

David