One would think that SharePoint would prevent you from loading up a SharePoint backup on a new domain with conflicting SIDs and usernames, but it actually allows you to do so without too much grief. I recently had to do this for a client who was having serious problems with WSS search and after a few trials and tribulations with STSADM I was able to get it up and running on my test virtual machine in a matter of minutes. Obviously my test VM isn’t on the client’s domain nor does it share and SIDs with the original hosting environment.

Disclaimer!!!  The notes below are just that: notes that I compiled while working on a client’s MOSS SP1 environment.  This is obviously an invasive procedure so do your due diligence and take backups, use test machines, and be careful!

Here’s how I did it

Source Server

Login to the source server and run the following command:

Stsadm -o backup -url http://sharepoint -filename c:\sharepoint.bak

Destination Server

Build out the destination server and run SharePoint configuration wizard, it is ok if you’ve already created a site collection on the target server because the new site will be overwritten by the -overwrite command below.

Warning – When you build out the new server you should try to build it using the same version and install all of the same Application Templates and binaries that were on the original server.

Stsadm -o restore -url http://sharepoint -filename c:\sharepoint.bak -overwrite

If you access the site immediately after restore here’s what you’ll see (if you restored it to a new domain)

Add a user via command line because the restored site will deny all of your login attempts (unless your server is on the same domain as the original source server – *** this post describes the steps for restoring to a different domain***)

Using the central administration console, you will note that the site collection still references the original administrators which are now invalid on this new domain.

>> Central Administration >> Application Management >> Site Collection Administrators

Run the command below to change ownership:

stsadm -o siteowner -url http://sharepoint -ownerlogin sharepoint\administrator

Now if you refresh central admin console you will see the new administrator as an owner, you can change the secondary administrator at this point as well.

Run the command below to add your new administrator to the site collection with the administrator role

stsadm -o adduser -url http://localhost -userlogin administrator -useremail test@test.com -role administrator -username administrator

Run IISRESET

Warning – Do not skip this step, you won’t be able to login until you run IISReset

Now you can refresh your main site and successfully login as the administrator.

Afterwards, you can optionally run this to clean up the old lingering logins explicitly

stsadm -o migrateuser -oldlogin olddomain\SPAdmin-newlogin newdomain\SPAdmin

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