Trouble with Mandatory Profiles!

[Tomdude182]

Hi guys

 

Wondered if anyone could help.

 

Running a 2008 R2/Win 7 environment and currently have all users running with roaming profiles. This works well except for shared accounts that younger students use to all log in with at the same time which is why I want to change these 3-4 accounts to use mandatory profiles in order to prevent profile corruption.

 

I have logged in for the first time with the account I want to change which has created a roaming profile on our server. I have changed the owner on the security tab of the profile to administrator to be able to get access to the profile folder and then changed the ntuser.dat file to ntuser.man.

 

However when I log in with the user account it still comes up that it is running with a roaming profile but now the status is local.

 

How can I get a mandatory profile? Am I missing something here?

 

Thanks in advance!

[3s-gtech]

Are these accounts in your AD? If so, (I'm pretty sure) you need to centrally host the mandatory profile on the network, then point the user's profile at it via the User Profile attribute on their AD object. Never tried doing it locally, but this seems more difficult than a centralised approach.

[Tomdude182]

Thank you for the reply!!

 

Yes sorry this is an active directory environment. At present all profiles are stored centrally in a shared folder on a server.

 

I am trying to change a roaming profile stored on a server into a mandatory profile stored on the server by going into the profile and changing the ntuser.dat file to ntuser.man. Even though I have made this change, when I go into the account and then look in computer properties > advanced system settings > user profiles, there is either no sign of the profile or it still says it is a roaming profile with a status of local.

[Arthur]

This might help?

 

Creating a Windows 7 Mandatory profile

[Tomdude182]

Thanks for the reply! Is this for lots of different users to use the same profile? I just need one account to use the mandatory profile although the one account will be logged in 20 different locations. Just wondering if there is a simpler way.

[Arthur]

Is this for lots of different users to use the same profile?

It could be for one user or the entire network (if you placed the profile in the \NETLOGON\Default User.v2 folder).

 

The key is to setup the mandatory profile correctly in the first place so that it works either way.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Arthur

[Tomdude182]

Thanks to everyone for all of your replies. I have stumbled across a much easier way to create a mandatory profile than to mess around with sysprep and answer files! I used the following method as shown here:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/63246-default-user-custom-profile-windows-7-without-sysprep.html

 

 

1. create and configure your model profile. For example lets say the name of the model profile is “modelprofile”

2. log off model profile, login the local administrator account.

3. launch regedit, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList]

4. Note that the value data DEFAULT (reg_expand_sz) is….. %SystemDrive%\Users\Default

5. right-click and Modify the string and change the path to ….%SystemDrive%\Users\modelprofile

———–

NOW COPY THE PROFILE

 

 

6. Right click “Computer”, click properties

7. Click Advanced System Settings

8. Under User Profiles, click on Settings…

9. Choose (click) on “Default Profile”

10. Click on “Copy To…”

11. Browse to or enter the path to the default user profile “C:\Users\Default”

12. Under “permitted to use” click on “change” type the object name “everyone”

13. Click OK, then OK again.

————————-

AFTER PROFILE COPIES SUCCESSFULLY THEN REVERT REGISTRY TO DEFAULT BY REPEATING STEPS 1-4.

 

 

14. Revert the original value data for the DEFAULT (reg_expand_sz) string path back to…. %SystemDrive%\Users\Default