Mandatory Profiles and Desktops

[faza]

Hello

We have got Mandatory profiles setup, We want to change the desktop on the pupil domain for a festive one. Normally I would go to the wallpaper folder drop an image in and then configure the AD to the new image. But now I have changed to Mandatory profiles it does not work. The only way I can get the new wallpaper to show is by removing the profile path out of the student’s accounts in the AD.

Does that mean that I will need to create a new Mandatory profile to incorporate the new image????

I don’t think I would need every time I want to change the wallpaper I create a new Mandatory profile.

Surely you just need to change the location in the AD and it should pick it up.


I am unsure where the wallpaper is currently saved as it is definitely not saved in that location as if you change it, it does not take affect.

Any ideas or pointers would be great!!!

Faza

[maniac]

Sounds to me like your policy hasn't been created correctly, so the user hive of the registry has the wrong security permissions, thus GPO's won't apply properly.

Apologies if you have created the policy properly, but sounds typical of the problems you experience when it hasn't been.

Do other GPO's work when you apply them??

Mike.

[faza]

Yes other things work fine.

[faza]

How do i correct the user hive issue?

[faza]

How do i correct the user hive issue?

[mrforgetful]

I use Mandatory Profiles and AD assigned wallpapers too.

I don't put it in the profile at all, it's purely assigned using the AD Policy and loaded from a server.

[faza]

I dont put it in the profile either. But for some reason when i remove the profiloe path from the AD the wallpaper appears.

[jsnetman]

This is occurring because you probably created the mandatory profile on a machine that already had group policy applied to it.

A quick fix is to rename the ntuser.man to ntuser.dat file in the profile, then load regedit, click on HKEY_USERS, then go to file load hive and navigate to the ntuser.dat file, give it a name of your choice. Click through the keys of your named hive to control panel then desktop and change the wallpaper value to point to your new wallpaper. Once finished unload the hive and rename the ntuser file to ntuser.man.

PS do not do it on a live profile copy the ntuser.man file to a different location first and copy it back whn finished.

[faza]

Am i going to the registry on the server?

[maniac]

No, not on the server.

1. Take a copy of the user.man file onto the C:\ of your workstation.
2. go into Regedit
3. Make sure you are in the HKEY_USERS section
4. Goto file . . . Load hive
5. browse for the user.man file on your machine
6. Give it a Keyname, e.g Students (doesn't matter what, it's only a temporary name for it while it's loaded)
7. Expand the HKEY_USERS and look for the keyname you just typed, that is the user.man registry file loaded into regedit.

You can then browse through all the registry settings contained within the user.man file and make adjustments accordingly. Be Very careful when doing this.

8. MAKE SURE YOU UN-LOAD IT FROM REGEDIT BEFORE CLOSING THE PROGRAM!

Mike.

[Joanne]

alternatively, rename your current wallpaper to .old and then put the new one in place with the same name?

After christmas, re-instate the old one??

[Chris_Jones]

I've just spent this morning getting our backgrounds working with mandatory profiles. The issue in our case was Active desktop was not enabled.

Although I had set "Enable Active Desktop" to Enabled, and "Disable Active Desktop" to Not configured, there is a third setting which also controls it! in Windows Components->Windows Explorer if the option "Turn on Classic Shell" is Enabled then Active desktop wallpaper will not work.

Why 3 seperate policies are needed to control the same thing God alone knows but this is what sorted it for us.

[PEO]

PS do not do it on a live profile copy the ntuser.man file to a different location first and copy it back whn finished.

Like i once did by mistake

[tosh74]

I've just spent this morning getting our backgrounds working with mandatory profiles. The issue in our case was Active desktop was not enabled.

Although I had set "Enable Active Desktop" to Enabled, and "Disable Active Desktop" to Not configured, there is a third setting which also controls it! in Windows Components->Windows Explorer if the option "Turn on Classic Shell" is Enabled then Active desktop wallpaper will not work.

Why 3 seperate policies are needed to control the same thing God alone knows but this is what sorted it for us.

thanks Chris, been banging my head off a brick wall all afternoon on this one (regmon was no help). If i logged on as a user outwith the OU but used the same profile I could see the desktop selected but it would not activate unitl I pressed ok. Turned out it was the Active Deskrop problem you described. Nice one !

[Chris_Jones]

gLAD THAT SORTED IT FOR YOU