SBS 2K3 - All Editions: Client Setup Wizard Error & Fix

When we receive Acer laptops, we normally pull the hard drives right away and at the minimum convert them to NTFS before booting the laptop for the first time. Acers come with one or sometimes two partitions formatted FAT32.

We missed one and this is what happened when we went to add it to the SBS domain:

Client Setup Wizard: Client Setup could not remove a special account created to migrate user settings from the previous user of this computer. Contact the person responsible for your network.

Heh, that person is me! ;)

These Acers were 8210 series laptops that had two FAT32 partitions on them. The 6460 series we were selling until we couldn't get any only had one FAT32 partition. Took it for granted that there would be a single FAT32 partition on these ones too.

I am not sure exactly why things go wonky on systems that were installed with two existing partitions with one eventually be eliminated. Things like desktop icons loose their images, and in some cases programs stop working altogether until they are reinstalled. A lot of grief with this particular scenario. Just try and uninstall an application after removing that second partition! :(

We were fortunate in this case as no apps were installed on the unit before heading down to the client site. We do have a cached image of all of their custom apps, but we decided to deliver and setup there due to timing.

So, how did we get rid of the error?

It is actually quite simple: go to the local Users & Groups and delete the _sbs_netsetup_ account from Users. You can then remove said user's directory from Documents and Settings.

Keep in mind that the setup did fail.

We have to remove the system from the domain, then rerun the mysbs/connectcomputer again to get it back on the domain. We would have to make sure the the Client Computer list on the SBS server reflects the needed changes before adding the system back to the domain too.

Or, as we chose to do, we continued setting up the system. It was added to the domain, but the SBS setup routine did not change the system name, add the appropriate users to the Local Admin group on the system, connect the domain profile to the existing profile in Documents & Settings, and run the client wizard after the final reboot.

After completing the missing tasks, we had a fully functional system on the SBS domain.

I do hope that Acer changes their system image setup to one NTFS partition soon!!!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists