Securing user data when reinstalling or replacing PCs

Question

Securing user data when reinstalling or replacing PCs

Sune Jensen 0

I'm primary responsible in my new job for Setting up PCs for our users, it be reinstalls or replacements.

In that process I spend a lot of time

#1 securing that there no stray documents and user data on the local drive,

#2 noting what extra software is installed

#3 and noting what printers are used.

I'm wondering if there is some scripts or tools capable of helping with this and perhaps also collecting other user settings?

Locked Question. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

2 answers

Answer 1

Deleted

This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

Comments have been turned off. Learn more

Answer 2

There are some ways to automate the collection of user data, installed software, printers, and even settings before a rebuild or replacement. You can approach this in two levels:

Task	What to Collect	Possible Automation Approach
#1 Stray documents / user data	Files on Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.	PowerShell scripts or USMT scanstate
#2 Installed software	Installed programs and version numbers	PowerShell (`Get-ItemProperty`, WMI, or Win32_Product)
#3 Printers	Installed printers + drivers + default printer	PowerShell (`Get-Printer`, `Get-PrintConfiguration`)
Extra	Browser favorites, Outlook signatures, network shares, etc.	User State Migration Tool (USMT) or custom scripts

Option 1 — Quick PowerShell-based Inventory (Fast to Deploy)

You can run this manually or remotely (e.g. via PSRemoting):

# Collect user data info, installed software, and printers
$UserProfile = [Environment]::GetFolderPath('UserProfile')
$OutputPath = "C:\Temp\UserInventory_$(hostname).txt"

# 1. Check for stray documents
"=== User Files Summary ===" | Out-File $OutputPath
Get-ChildItem -Path "$UserProfile\Desktop","$UserProfile\Documents","$UserProfile\Downloads" -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
    Where-Object { -not $_.PSIsContainer } |
    Select-Object FullName, Length, LastWriteTime |
    Out-File -Append $OutputPath

# 2. List installed software
"`n=== Installed Software ===" | Out-File -Append $OutputPath
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*, 
                 HKLM:\Software\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* |
    Where-Object { $_.DisplayName } |
    Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher |
    Sort-Object DisplayName |
    Out-File -Append $OutputPath

# 3. List printers
"`n=== Installed Printers ===" | Out-File -Append $OutputPath
Get-Printer | Select-Object Name, DriverName, PortName, Shared | Out-File -Append $OutputPath

# 4. Optional: capture some user settings
"`n=== User Settings (Registry) ===" | Out-File -Append $OutputPath
Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders |
    Out-File -Append $OutputPath

Write-Host "Inventory written to $OutputPath"

This gives you a one-file report per computer that summarizes local files, software, and printers.

Option 2 — Use Microsoft's User State Migration Tool (USMT)

USMT is part of the Windows ADK, designed specifically for migrations like yours. It can:

Collect user data (Desktop, Documents, AppData)
Capture many app & system settings (Outlook profiles, IE favorites, etc.)
Restore to a new machine

Example flow:

scanstate \\server\backup\$env:COMPUTERNAME /i:miguser.xml /i:migapp.xml /o /v:13 /c /l:scan.log

Then on the new machine:

loadstate \\server\backup\$env:COMPUTERNAME /i:miguser.xml /i:migapp.xml /v:13 /c /l:load.log

You can customize what gets included/excluded (printers, network drives, PST files, etc.) in the XML config.

Option 3 — Combine with inventory tools

If you're managing more machines at scale by using Intune or Endpoint Manager, these collect installed apps, hardware info, and can deploy scripts remotely.

Option 4 — Hybrid approach

Run the PowerShell script above to capture a quick inventory.
Run USMT (or a smaller robocopy-based script) to collect user data to a network share.
After reinstall/replacement, restore the user profile and settings.

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin

Sune Jensen 0 Reputation points

2025-10-09T16:18:00.51+00:00

Thanks a lot!
The # 1. Check for stray documents, does it explicitly check outside the users c:\users%user% folders or inside or both? What document types will it find? Can that be configured?
Marcin Policht 101K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2025-10-09T16:42:25.8466667+00:00

The following code

Get-ChildItem -Path "$UserProfile\Desktop","$UserProfile\Documents","$UserProfile\Downloads" -Recurse

only searches within the user's profile folder (C:\Users\<username>\) the Desktop, Documents, and Downloads subfolders. It does not search anywhere else on the system (like C:\, D:\, ProgramData, etc.). It's intentionally scoped to where most users store personal files. As written, it finds all files — it does not filter by file type. If you want to limit it to only certain types of documents (e.g., Office and PDFs), you can filter like this:

$Extensions = @('*.docx','*.xlsx','*.pptx','*.pdf','*.txt','*.csv','*.jpg','*.png') Get-ChildItem -Path "$UserProfile\Desktop","$UserProfile\Documents","$UserProfile\Downloads" -Recurse -Include $Extensions -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

If you want to widen the search to detect stray files anywhere on the disk, you can add more paths.

Example:

$PathsToScan = @( "$UserProfile\Desktop", "$UserProfile\Documents", "$UserProfile\Downloads", "C:\", "D:\Data" )

But you'd most likely want to exclude system and program folders so the script doesn't crawl gigabytes of OS data.

You can exclude paths like this:

Get-ChildItem -Path $PathsToScan -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object { -not ($_.FullName -match '\\Windows\\' -or $_.FullName -match '\\Program Files' -or $_.FullName -match '\\ProgramData\\') }

That way you'll catch “stray” user files such as:

C:\Temp\report.xlsx

C:\Work\quotes.pdf

D:\Personal\photos\… but skip system folders.

If the above response helps answer your question, remember to "Accept Answer" so that others in the community facing similar issues can easily find the solution. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

hth

Marcin