Mandatory profiles in XP / Windows 7 environment

[MaXiM]

Hi, I have googled this but cannot find an answer.

 

How can you set a computer room to force the users to use the v2 mandatory profile instead of the xp version?

 

I thought of loopback but in GPO editor there is no option to specify what profile to use, that is done in their user account.

 

Anybody else found a way around this?

[sted]

if you use win vista/7 it always uses the v2 it cant use the old ones so you just need to give them the same names so staff.man and staff.man.v2

[MaXiM]

Yeah but in AD in the user profile bit you can only specify one profile.. ie staff.man

 

so where would I be able to specify the v2 profile?

[fiza]

What would happen if you just specifed V2 in the profile part of their Account settings?

[localzuk]

Yeah but in AD in the user profile bit you can only specify one profile.. ie staff.man

 

so where would I be able to specify the v2 profile?

 

The 2 different profiles are of different formats, so XP can't use V2 and Windows Vista/7 can't use V1 - at least that's what every document I've read on the subject says!

[fiza]

I am just testing this at the moment (just started!). I changed the profile path of my test user to \\myserver\Profiles$\TESTS.v2 . It was originally pointing to profiles$\tests

 

I was able to login fine from an XP machine and a Win7 machine. The new favourites folders were there.

 

Thats as far as I have got.

 

I plan on ditching roaming profiles on Win7 and just redirecting everything.

[localzuk]

The problem is, things like 'AppData' compared with 'Application Data'. The prior is where Windows XP looks for things, and the latter is where Vista/7 look for things.

[fiza]

So having a mixed environment with XP and Win7 clients and roaming between the 2 wont work?

Is my best bet to ditch roaming profiles and redirect everything?

 

edit - I already have application data redirected

[localzuk]

I think it may work somewhat, but you should be prepared for 'irregularities'. Redirecting would be a better choice.

[sted]

Yeah but in AD in the user profile bit you can only specify one profile.. ie staff.man

 

so where would I be able to specify the v2 profile?

 

you dont its all done automatically if your xp profile is staff.man your win7 needs to be staff.man.v2 if its flibble.man it needs to be flibble.man.v2

 

What would happen if you just specifed V2 in the profile part of their Account settings?

 

the the user you did it to could not log in as xp would fail to laod staff.man.v2 and vista/7 would not find staff.man.v2.v2

[fiza]

Found this in another thread. It talks about Vista and XP mixed environment but I am thinking the principles will be the same for XP and Win7 Environment.

 

http://www.freebsd.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/pub/NexusDocumentation/WebHome/ManagingRoamingUserDataDeploymentGuide.doc#_Toc144803844

[MaXiM]

If a user in Active Directory has a profile path set to: staffuser.man .. and then I change it to staffuser.man.v2 won't that stop the user from logging into the XP machine?!

 

That's why I thought maybe there was some kind of loopback that could be done.. but couldn't figure out how.

[fiza]

I guess your right. Ok so you have a mandatory profile ;

 

The user logs in to XP with it and is directed to \\server\staffprofiles\mandatory

 

in which resides the mandatory profile (staff.man) XP connects to this

 

The user logs in to Win7 and is directed to \\server\staffprofiles\mandatory

 

in which resides the mandatory profile (staff.man.v2) and connects to this as it cannot connect to staff.man

 

It is a mandatory profile so there are no changes to sync.

 

If you have My docs, start menu, desktop and app data redirected shouldnt this work?

[3s-gtech]

You never need to type .v2 into the profile path. Vista and 7 will assume it's there anyway, so just create the .v2 profile in the profiles location.

 

We ditched staff profiles, just using local with redirected everything (including Favourites now). Works fine between XP and 7.

[fiza]

You never need to type .v2 into the profile path. Vista and 7 will assume it's there anyway, so just create the .v2 profile in the profiles location.

 

We ditched staff profiles, just using local with redirected everything (including Favourites now). Works fine between XP and 7.

 

How are you redirecting favourites on the XP machines? I found this : Redirect Favorites and Cookies folder using a Group Policy

[3s-gtech]

There was a thread on here about it I think, but I believe that linked solution on petri is the method I used. Working fine with IE8, Windows 7 etc.

[Rozzer]

I setup a loop back policy for my windows 7 machines and set the profile option in Group Policies for that machine group. This may only work for me because I do not use the profile path option in AD for XP or Windows 7.

 

Ross

[sted]

I setup a loop back policy for my windows 7 machines and set the profile option in Group Policies for that machine group. This may only work for me because I do not use the profile path option in AD for XP or Windows 7.

 

Ross

 

oh it will override that but EVERYONE admin/users will get the settings so it can be a pita when you need to do admin work on it and say windows key+ e dosent work etc

[MaXiM]

So let me get this right. I go into the User account in AD and just type in the profile path: staffuser

 

and this will serve both my staffuser.man and staffuser.man.v2 ?

[sted]

So let me get this right. I go into the User account in AD and just type in the profile path: staffuser

 

and this will serve both my staffuser.man and staffuser.man.v2 ?

 

no you type in staffuser.man

[MaXiM]

I've tried that before typing staffuser.man but when I go to log into a windows 7 machine it complains. Must be missing something..

[alan-d]

I've just set ours up for testing and so far it seems to be working as it should.

 

Create (or use existing) a folder where your profiles are currently. eg mandatory-profile

Into that folder copy the existing mandatory profile eg staff.man and rename it to staff.man.v2

In the same folder place another copy of the staff.man profile.

In AD point the user to server\profiles\mandatory-profile\staff.man

 

This should allow users to log into both XP and Win 7 without problems.

[3s-gtech]

I've tried that before typing staffuser.man but when I go to log into a windows 7 machine it complains. Must be missing something..

 

Have you actually created the .man.v2 profile path in your network profiles location, and is it definitely working? There are several methods for making this profile - the MS approved route involves sysprep and the default profile.

[sted]

Have you actually created the .man.v2 profile path in your network profiles location, and is it definitely working? There are several methods for making this profile - the MS approved route involves sysprep and the default profile.

 

and have you renamed ntuser.dat to ntuser.man