The User Profile information is read into the registry (HKEY_Current_User) from 
ntuser.dat or ntuser.man when the user signs in.  When a user is logged off the 
ntuser.dat file is backed up.  But when a user stay's logged in or a service is 
running the ntuser.dat is locked.  Truthfully I need to run some more tests on 
Windows 2003 but on Windows 2000 there are many times you have to get the the 
ntuser.dat file from the adsm.sys file.

On servers having the profile isn't really as important. Truthfully the place I 
make sure I have it is when backing up workstations like XP. However, I have 
found that some services that run under accounts have an issue if you don't get 
their ntuser.dat back correctly.  This is why I want to make sure I understand 
how the User Profile is recovered on Windows 2003.


Richard Sims <rbs AT BU DOT EDU> wrote:
>VSS is supported for backing up system files, but not for backing up
>open files. (At least, that's my understanding. We were talking
>originally about ntuser.dat, which is not backed up as a system file.

As I understand it, the essence of the ntuser.dat file is generated into
a Registry key as the user enters into their logon session, which means
that it would incidentally be backed up as a system object at that point.
I don't know how much good such transient data does in a restoral, though.

Richard Sims

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