Changing from roaming profiles to gpo

[chrbb]

Decided I've had enough of roaming and mandatory profiles, fed up one teacher refusing to reboot his laptop because it mucks up his folders and refusing to understand my explanation of roaming and temp profiles.

So set up one pc and one test user, created an organisation unit, make one setting in the group policy editor - I changed permissions on the default profile to no access on the computer, so I wouldn't pick up any old settings - it didn't work! Is there something you have to change on the computer to make it accept group policy?

Also when and if I get it to work GPO will take priority over the current prolies won't it ?

[Ric_]

By the sounds of it you are wanting to use a default profile for all. Copy the set up profile into NETLOGON and call it Default User. This will be picked up first when a new profile is created for those without a profile.

 

You then need to blitz the old profiles... a quick startup script using delprof can do this :twisted: (Make sure that stoopid people haven't filled their desktops with VITAL files).

 

To make your GPO apply, run 'gpupdate /force /boot' and the machine will reboot with the new settings applied.

[chrbb]

I'm not sure I need a default profile in netlogon, I was going to start from stratch with group polices and set it up how I want it.

 

I'm a bit concerned about deleting profiles with delprof will this delete data from teacher's laptops, they all save to 'My documents' and very rarely back up to the server, another thing I want to change!

[Ric_]

Sorry... I assumed that you already used folder re-direction alongside the profiles.

 

You can set the policy to move the local MyDocuments but I have never had any luck with this (although the network I tried it on is ropey to say the least - set up by someone else!).

 

You could copy the My Documents stuff as part of the script and only run delprof after successful copying. This would get around that problem.

 

The reason that you still need a profile of some sort is that there's some things that GPOs won't do - program-specific reg keys and like for instance.

[Jon]

You must be carefull when using delprof if your users also use Outlook Express. By default the OE store folder is located in the local settings of users profiles, if you delete this you also delete all thier email.

[chrbb]

I think I'm going to change the staff profiles to local, after making sure their laptop profile is up to date, delete the path to their roaming profile. Set gpo for proxy server (and anything I can think of!) but not run delprof on the laptops.

I don't think any of them realise their 'My documents' follows them because they mainly use their laptops and only use a school computer when they are working with children in the suite.

 

I also want them to get used to a regular backup to the server which will be their responsibility.

I use a batch file in my other school that the teacher's click on to run a backup and most of them use it now!