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I reinstalled a server which had a secondary hard drive attached.

Before I had folders that gave certain users permissions, but now they are messed up because the original user doesn't exist anymore after the reinstall.

The permissions are now displayed as GUID's instead of normal names.

Is there a tool somewhere that replace the old GUID with a new existing user?

Roger Far
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  • Have you already recreated the users? Can you easily match up which id represents each user? – Grant May 19 '14 at 01:48
  • I have an old VM where I can see which user is which GUID / permission id, now I just need something to replace all these guids with the new users on my new system. – Roger Far May 19 '14 at 04:11

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The answer is no, you can't do that. Sorry :-(

Windows sees users as SID strings, not user names, and they are generated randomly. If you delete a user account and then re-create it, it will generate a different SID for that user, and that user will be a separate, distinct person from the first -- even if you use the same account name and everything.

You CAN, however, figure out which SID belonged to which user by looking in the registry of the old server (if you still have it around). You just mount the SYSTEM hive and navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Each SID known to the old server will show the location of that user's profile folder (and hence, their account name).

That will help you rebuild the permissions on the drive, knowing who had access to what. But you cannot, under any circumstance, associate a user account to a specific SID. That would be SID spoofing and it's a security violation that Windows specifically guards against.

Wes Sayeed
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  • I get that yeah, but there is no tool that can take the old SID, and replace it with a new User? – Roger Far May 21 '14 at 03:59
  • My bad. I didn't see your comment about having the VM where you can see what SID belonged to which user already. As far as I know, there is no tool that can do that. I've done that kind of thing before via a script, but modifying ACLs from a script is complicated if you're not comfortable with scripting. – Wes Sayeed May 21 '14 at 17:06