Windows Profiles

Right I've finally got the wireless up and running and when logging in a test user it takes around 2 minutes, my own login takes about 3 mminutes and the roaming profiles is 39mb (just checked it! ;) ) Firstly after reading some of the other forum posts I will be installing the 2k3 and xp patches that help with folder redirection but I also want to speed up the system anyway now login times on a wired connection are proabbly at worst half that so what ways would you suggest to reduce the problem at least on the wireless system? Is there a way of blocking the use of roaming profiles when logging in via wireless? I know this would mean favourites et cetera would be lost but thats a small price to pay? Or is there a tried and tested method to help this?


Wes

You could check out the FlexProfile Kit. This gives you a hybrid of roaming/mandatory profiles with redirected folders (without having to use GP to redirect). They claim very fast logon times.

Does anyone know of a quick script I can use to change all the permissions for the profiles so that I can see that it is the wireless and not large profile data slowing everything down to a crawl?


Wes

Why not just modify a user account and remove the 'profile' entry. When they log on, they will just get a local profile based on the Default User profile on the computer (assuming you do not have a 'Default User' profile in the NETLOGON share).

I still want to have reg settings and favourites as I have a few of my own programs that save to the reg to make sure they've agreed to the online AUP and things like that.

Wes

FlexProfiles will do that for you.

A FlexProfile is basically a Mandatory Profile but with certain resources redirected our made to roam. The FPK (FlexProfile Kit) makes use of the Office customization wizard to essentially make portions of the registry that you define roam with the user. It's clever stuff and apparently it's the de-facto standard in the Citrix/TS world.

Yeah I've been reading up the user guide it's quite interesting to see the setting you can save pretty much any reg entry you can find by the looks of it!

At present though I'm looking at setting the profile size limit to 30mb and excluding things like the desktop and app data.

What I was thinking about doing was firstly copying the admin user area with all the registration and software settings (Office for instance that asks the user to register first time with initials first and surnames - change these settings to a default say the school name). Copy it over to the default user area then at least when they log on it won't spend time messing about configuring office et cetera.

Would it be possible to put in the OU that the laptops reside in something like a policy with the no override option in limiting the profile to something tiny or just stating that it excludes all of the folders in the users profile so that it doesn't spend time loading settings? I know that goo dpractise says I should keep Computer Configs all in the computers OUs and the USers config in the users OUs but would this be a good step?


Wes