User profile deletion, XP Pro

[Sirbendy]

Right..bit of a rant, bit of a question.

 

NGFL have created an XPSP2 workstation build now, and I've launched into the customary "rip it apart and redo it" Karl special. Build is good, stability is fair to good. Disk usage though..not great.

 

We have a lot of "older" machines..10/20Gb drives. We even have a Suite of p2/350 / 192mb / 4gb machines. On all of these I can get an image down to 2.25Gb if I'm ruthless..but the size of the profiles they're caching means that it can take as little as a week or 2 before the machines fill up.

 

The SP1 builds are not as affected, and in an effort to do some "routine cleaning", I have a script that maps each C: drive on the workstation, and deletes profiles beginning with certain letters..making sure to miss the "Administrator", "SophosSvcAccount", "EMLibUser" etc accounts.

 

However, all it seems to do is empty the directories, but leave the structure intact. Xp being daft then makes a new dir structure when the kid logs back in with the same name, but with "EDIT" appended etc.

 

After 5 or 6 rounds of this, the whole damned profile goes doolally, and we have to map and manually select/delete the users from each drive.

 

So..my questions.

 

1. Any tools to automate this, bearing in mind we can't remove every profile or we kill the workstation?

 

2. Does anyone remember DELTREE from their DOS days? I'm sure it used to kill to wildcards, and remove directory structures in the process..I've tried it from DOS 5 to DOS 7 and DR-DOS..it can delete to wildcards, but again leaves the structure intact.

 

3. Anyone got a copy of the good old "nuke" file deleter? I seem to remember that was a beast of a tool..

 

Any ideas/help/suggestions greatly appreciated!

[Ric_]

Why don't you use delprof from MS? Search for it on their download site. It isn't perfect but it does a good job. If you stick it in a startup script it will delete the profiles and remove all the stray keys from the registry too.

[Face-Man]

Try

 

user hive deletion

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1B286E6D-8912-4E18-B570-42470E2F3582&displaylang=en

 

and best of all - Delprof.exe

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=901A9B95-6063-4462-8150-360394E98E1E&displaylang=en

[Geoff]

Any tools to automate this, bearing in mind we can't remove every profile or we kill the workstation?

 

Grab Remote Profile Cleaner from here:

 

http://www.no-nonsens.nl/

[ChrisH]

If you havent already I can recommend using Nlite to chop away at your windows install to free up some more space. I have done it with languages and keyboards etc as well as certain drivers and gain over 200 meg. I have also seen a script somewhere that will compress parts of windows it deems non critical.

 

As for the profile situation we use the two the face man has mentioned and they work fairly good.

[Sirbendy]

Tried Delprof, but it couldn't tell "Administrator" from anything else, unfortunatly. Tried RMDIR..doesn't play nice with wildcards. Nor deltree.

 

I'll have a look at the hive thing though..it really is a daft setup..

[ChrisH]

The older version of delprof always left the admin and I believe the newer version you have to watch your switches so double check.

[Sirbendy]

that remote profile cleaner is great! I'm going to leave it running overnight, while my machine does a new ghost build. It seems on the surface to be EXACTLY what we need.

 

Many thanks..I'll update more tomorrow if it works..here's to a quiet day without the LRC calling every 30 seconds to report a "dead" machine..