Vista/XP Mandatory Profile Hell

[RockIt]

and for my 2nd post...

 

Has anyone successfully set-up mandatory profiles that work for both vista and XP? This will used by all our students everywhere on the network.

 

We have an XP mandatory profile which works fine but we can't seem to find a way to 'add' the vista information in?

 

I have been following the guide here...

 

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/fb3681b2-da39-4944-93ad-dd3b6e8ca4dc1033.mspx?mfr=true

 

...but with little success.

 

I'm either being really stupid or Microsoft's wording is fairly confusing.

 

Any successes out there?

[User3204]

Riighht... This sounds a bit arsey.

 

No. You probably can't do it, as they will end up with different regedit versions.

 

When I inherited my network, it had some Win 95 and 98 clients. It worked differently in Win9x versions, we had to copy the MAN file to the students user folders.

 

What I ended up doing was creating two MAN files, one called user95.man and one called user98.man, and then depending upon the machine copying the right MAN file.

 

I don't use Vista, but does it want to load the MAN file from the same location as XP does ?

You migth be able to create two MAN files, one for XP and one for Vista, and then if it will load these MAN files from the relevant _local_ "All Users" folder, which is different for Vista/XP. Then you could copy over (at startup) the Vista.man to the "c:\users\all users\user.man" (is that right?) and the XP.man to the "c:\documents and settings\all users\user.man".

 

Does that make sense ? Only I've been drinking...

[RockIt]

Thanks again for your reply.

 

It does make sense what you're saying however, I think that MS have now changed it so that in vista profiles are no longer downloaded to the local workstation. Instead the profile is accessed directly from the network location (although i could be wrong about that).

 

This pretty much rules out your suggestion unfortunately

 

Any other ideas?

[User3204]

Sorry I hadn't checked the link, but I have now had a quick lookie through it, and I think you will have to create a whole new Vista MAN file.

 

I can't tell how the OSs will decide which file to use though....

 

With XP it was just drop into the netlogon share... but this won't work if there is one there for the XP MAN file.

 

It'll stilll be a pain, as you'll have to maintain two MAN files.... (I dumped Win 95).

[GrumbleDook]

I did have a quick go at this earlier in the year and you do have to create a second Vista profile but then spend to time setting up folder redirection on *both* profiles.

 

It is not nice or easy and it broke a number of times. It was another reason why we left Vista for the time being.

 

From talking with MS I think that the example schools they have that are using Vista are moving to it lock, stock and barrel ... but I can always ask if they can nudge one of those schools.

[GrumbleDook]

The above Technet document is regarded, within MS, as the definitive source, but I have also been pointed at this blog.

 

I am also trying to find other schools (via MS) that already have Vista and XP side by side.

[FN-GM]

you need to make 2 folders one for xp and one for vista with 2 mandatory profiles, the clients will detect witch one to use. XP called "user" & vista called "user.v2"

[john]

I can confirm the user and user.v2 option. I have both a Vista and an XP roaming profile on my network, very annoying really as i loose data between them so something needs to be done.