Back up Win local account list?

August 19, 2005 3:44 AM

Is there a way to back up just the local username/password list in Windows (specifically Win2000 server) and copy it from machine to machine?

I have a collection of 7 radiology-image servers that have to have a very long (and identical) local-account user list on all of 'em for the benefit of outside locations (doctors' offices) in which the users and their pcs aren't members of this hospital's domain. Yes I'm doing all the usual full and incremental backups but considering the amount of typing and clicking that goes into these userlists I'd like to have a separate backup of just them in my pocket. If it were Unix I could just burn /etc/password and /etc/shadow to a CD and have exactly what I need. But in Windows? What (if anything) to do? Thanks very much!

posted by jfuller to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

I just remembered a trick from the NT4 resource kit. I don't know if it still works on 2000/2003.

addusers \\machine /d extractfile.txt

/d is "dump". You'll need the addusers command from the resource kit, but you'd need that anyway to rebuild them.

Otherwise, I'd seriously consider building another domain controller for these accounts, and using domain trusts to get them access to the hospital domain.

Note: This doesn't save passwords. Moving passwords about is problematical in Windows. You could use a password cracker and get most of them. But 99% of the battle is the accounts. You can invert this command (use a textfile to add accounts) -- the accounts all come in with no password, but a requirement to change the password on next logon, so while not ideal, it would help with a fast rebuild.

Note that net user and net accounts might give you the rest, but I'd have to check them (don't have a windows box here.)
posted by eriko at 5:20 AM on August 19, 2005

Eriko's suggestion is a good one.

Passwords can be set at the command line in Windows. So you could probably run a batch file to set passwords.

C:\>net user /?
The syntax of this command is:

NET USER
[username [password | *] [options]] [/DOMAIN]
username {password | *} /ADD [options] [/DOMAIN]
username [/DELETE] [/DOMAIN]

C:\>

C:\>net /? will get more info for additional commands.
posted by theora55 at 12:08 PM on August 19, 2005