what profiles to use?

[ful56_uk]

hi

 

i have been reading a lot on here about profiles,

 

i want to use profiles but I am a little confussed on what the best type is.

 

i want to use them for students and staff, but i want login times kept down.

 

not to sure whats best really.

 

any advice?

[6Foot2]

Hi,

 

We use mandatory profiles for Students and Staff. I am in the process of creating new profiles for both sets of users. Once the profiles have been created and copied to the server I intend on deleting superfluous information to cut down on the size and hopefully speed up logon times. When finished I expect to be left with four files in the profile [i think]

 

NTUser.Man

NTUser.Man.Log

 

and two others I can't recall at the moment. I will post more detail tomorrow when I have access to the servers again [i would logon now but the power supply has been iffy all day and has taken the network down four times already today]

 

Not sure if this is what you are looking for or even if this will pan out for me. Others here may have other thoughts on this.

[ful56_uk]

yeah if you dont mind. do you run office 2007? if so do you have to open all the office apps before sending it to the server?

 

also what redirection do you use do you edit it in the registry ir gpos

 

mark

[6Foot2]

We are in the process of moving over to Office 2007 during this holiday. However that is not the reason for the new profiles.

 

Reasons are: CorelDraw [Will not run for Students on the old profile]

 

Logon times: Can be VERY long at times for both Students and Staff. The current Staff profile is quite large and I am hoping that slimming it down drastically will improve this.

 

Back to Office 2007: I had not planned to open each app. However I do want to change the default font for Word [and possibly other applications] I may have to leave this until the next round of imaging as in the rush to complete [with the pressure of other work backing up] I forgot to experiment with this particular setting.

 

I did create a template with all of the setting I wanted, placed it in a central location and pointed Word at it using the Office/Word ADM. Trouble is whenever any Office application closes it complains that the template is read only [AND it does not set the font the way I want it. ]

[srochford]

if so do you have to open all the office apps before sending it to the server?

 

also what redirection do you use do you edit it in the registry ir gpos

 

Ideally, you want to open every app while logged on using the account that's going to be your master profile. With a mandatory profile, if you don't do this then users will get fed up because every time they run apps they will go through first run settings.

 

Of course, not every app has "first run" stuff (eg Notepad, Paint) but many do

 

Once you've done all that, you need to search the registry (HKCU bit) for references to the username you've used - some of them you can leave but others will need changing (eg some software will set the save location to something like \\server\share\username - you probably want that to be n:\ or whatever drive letter you use for home directory)

 

Now you copy the profile to a server share (whatever you've specified for your users or \\domain\netlogon\default user if you want it to also be the basis for new users where you're not forcing a mandatory profile). Log on now as a test user and check each app again - make sure they work.

 

Finally I think it's easier to get the redirection right using group policies - redirect "my documents", "application data" and "desktop"

[powdarrmonkey]

Profile types:

 

Local - default type, gets created on a machine and stays there on the local disk, does not follow the user around. On each machine they log into, a new local profile is created. Changes are not propogated between machines, and profiles must be deleted from each machine by hand.

 

Roaming - created from a template defined by the administrator, then kept on the server from then on. During login, the profile is created or downloaded, and at logout the changes made are uploaded back to the server. Follows the user around between machines, but a cached copy is left on each local disk to speed up the next login (changes are replicated through deltas). The user gets the same environment on each machine, but unless carefully managed profiles can quickly become large and unwieldy, consuming server storage and making logins slow.

 

Mandatory - like a roaming profile, but changes made by the user during the session are discarded at logout. Cached copies are not kept on local disks. One template can be applied to many users, making mandatory profiles very efficient, but customisations by the user are lost after each session. Some hacking in the registry can produce a balance by storing some parts of the profile in a different location, such as putting the Favourites folder into My Documents. Although the profile itself is discarded, the favourites are not, so the user's changes are kept.

 

Given the choice, I use carefully managed roaming profiles for staff and split mandatory profiles for students, so they can't go crazy customising things but do get useful things between sessions, like Favourites, History and so on.

[powdarrmonkey]

When finished I expect to be left with four files in the profile [i think]

 

NTUser.Man

NTUser.Man.Log

 

and two others I can't recall at the moment.

 

You will need to keep many other things to make the profile useful. I have successfully reduced a mandatory profile down to about 1.5MB before now, by pruning the file system and registry, but keeping base settings for all installed applications (so for example, the user isn't prompted to configure Office every time they log in).

[ful56_uk]

Cheers guys. What about the cookies and history folders. How are these redirected or are they not? Or do they need to be for each user

[powdarrmonkey]

Cheers guys. What about the cookies and history folders. How are these redirected or are they not? Or do they need to be for each user

 

I don't know if policy extensions can do redirections; I use the registry: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

[Ignatius]

You will need to keep many other things to make the profile useful. I have successfully reduced a mandatory profile down to about 1.5MB before now, by pruning the file system and registry, but keeping base settings for all installed applications (so for example, the user isn't prompted to configure Office every time they log in).

 

I'm interested to look into this myself but dread the slow logon/logoff process. Is there any logical way of trimming down the profile, other than trial and error of deleting files until the profile doesn't work as desired?

[ful56_uk]

yeah me too how is this done, what folders can you delete from the man folder

 

mark