Bulk users and home folders - best practice?

[simpsonj]

@teejay Entirely possible but its not on a regular basis, I haven't had a network share fail on me this year, but once burned, twice shy...

I use a mandatory profile for students, which seems to be working reasonable well. Not the easiest thing in the world to set up on Windows 7, though there is a good forum thread on it somewhere on EduGeek.

I'm not sure I would bother with a roaming profile otherwise, I would redirect everything (Start Menu, Desktop, Favourites etc). Again, personal opinion and YMMV. Would agree with plexer though, definately no need for 3rd party tools to lock down student workstations, Group Policy can lock down pretty much everything.

[TheScarfedOne]

Take a look at the following link from the ADDS team at Microsoft...

Automatic creation of user folders for home, roaming profile and redirected folders. - Ask the Directory Services Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Thats how Ive moved on to doing it now, in combo with Active User Manager

[cheeseslice]

[QUOTE=simpsonj;

As a heads up, you might want to ensure that Libraries are dealt with in any way you see fit. The reason being is that if the Redirection fails, they will still have a My Documents, but it will be the C:\Users\Public\ My Docs, leading kids to save onto C: and thus it won't be there when they log back in. I use a mandatory profile to get around this issue, but if you're using individual profiles you might want to look into an alternative...[/QUOTE]

how do you deal with libraries, what would you suggest?

I have created a few test users with home directories and I am setting the group policy to redirect the documents folder to the home folder, is it best to redirect the rest of the folders too? or can is there a way to disable everything else and have the user only save to the documents folder in windows 7?

[simpsonj]

I tjhink it was just a GPO, under User Config- Policies- Admin templates- Windows Components- Windows Explorer - Turn off Windows Libraries features that rely on indexed file data.

Either that, or I configured the mandatory profile and took out all the library locations barring the z:\ drive (which I map their My Documents to).

Try the top option first and that might work, otherwise I think there are some very neat solutions to this issue on edugeek.

You should have an option to set the Music, Pictures and Videos folders to "Follow the Documents folder". I set the Desktop to redirect into the My Documents (Z:\Desktop) so that students can have their own desktop as some prefer to work that way. Otherwise I would block students from being able to add files to the desktop entirely.

[gshaw]

Take a look at the following link from the ADDS team at Microsoft...

Automatic creation of user folders for home, roaming profile and redirected folders. - Ask the Directory Services Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Thats how Ive moved on to doing it now, in combo with Active User Manager

Do you use the separate share Home$ or just redirect My Documents into FldrRedir$ along with the Desktop (and AppData etc)?

Not sure why it mentions to use Home Folders, though those were a relic of the NT days?

If I redo our roaming profiles I was going to use these permissions for the share...

Security Recommendations for Roaming User Profiles Shared Folders: Group Policy

[spc-rocket]

I tjhink it was just a GPO, under User Config- Policies- Admin templates- Windows Components- Windows Explorer - Turn off Windows Libraries features that rely on indexed file data.

Either that, or I configured the mandatory profile and took out all the library locations barring the z:\ drive (which I map their My Documents to).

Try the top option first and that might work, otherwise I think there are some very neat solutions to this issue on edugeek.

You should have an option to set the Music, Pictures and Videos folders to "Follow the Documents folder". I set the Desktop to redirect into the My Documents (Z:\Desktop) so that students can have their own desktop as some prefer to work that way. Otherwise I would block students from being able to add files to the desktop entirely.

Hi there,

We're trying out the AUP and it looks very good. I found a few things with it that it automatically creates a normal profile folder and share and also profile with .v2 for vista and windows 7. I was just wondering if there is a way to not do the normal profile i.e. we will be moving over to windows 7 so all profiles will be with .v2 at the end.

Also i think it is not possible to get the AUP to hide the share i.e. put the $ at end of the share for profile so if anyone knows how to do this please let me know. It is an excellent program that does a lot of stuff and the bulk import/creation of users is really good and quick.