TechSupp Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 Just changing over to W7 in the summer and the question has come up about user profiles. We currently have teacher roaming profiles and pupils to a single mandatory profile. Its been suggested that we dont bother with the profiles and just have everything redirected, documents, music, desktop, start menu etc. Going to change it so that everyone, staff and pupils will hav e the same W7 experience, desktop and start menu wise and lock it all down. We have a test PC set up with a test OU etc and looks fine to me and cant believe the difference in logon times from cold and from logn to desktop compared with our current XP system. While I can see the benefit in all the redirection, are we going to hit any pitfalls and has anyone gone down this route?
Pete10141748 Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 It sounds like a nice idea, if you can do it. Teachers here like to make their desktop their own. Backgrounds related to the class, or topic they are teaching. Icons for programs they use most on the desktop, work files for the day on the desktop... it means a performance hit, but it keeps them happy here. I wouldn't get away with locking everything down, SLT would prefer to let them have some freedom for their own machine even if it means some extra logon time.
cpjitservices Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 all folders here redirected for all users.... means we can back stuff up easier. We can backup all the user redirected folders!
ThatBoringBloke Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 Local profiles with folder redirection all they way! When a profile corrupts it only affects one machine so that users can change to another pc with ease. We also run REMPROF on a schedule to remove all local profiles from the machines too.
Blue_Cookeh Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 (edited) Folder redirection on Windows 7 here, seems so much simpler than messing with profiles all the time! Make sure you're using Access Based Enumeration too. Edited July 18, 2012 by Blue_Cookeh
the_quick Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 We have here roaming profiles and had that for pupils as well, but soon changed to mandatory for kids. Staff have docs, pics, music, favourites and desktop redirected and roaming profiles - but this can grow to huge size - for example iplayer for some reason store downloaded file in profile - so it can take a while to logon teacher to computer he never used. Pupils had roaming profiles but when suddenly 5 ICT suites starting to logon, network was slowing down and servers were mega busy - meaning bit longer logons. Printers were playing up as well, so mandatory profiles and that was sorted. We as well moved all staff documents and profiles to different server, to speed things up. Seems to be working fine now We were thinking about redirecting start menu and desktops to read only folder but for time being we are going to postpone in, but it is not bad idea
jamin100 Posted July 18, 2012 Posted July 18, 2012 hmmm, local profiles.. talk to me about that then.. Windows XP here at the moment. Staff have Roaming profiles with pretty much everything re-directed. Students get mandatory profiles again with everything re-directed. Next week everything is moving over to Windows 7. Staff will have new roaming profiles so that they can customise their task bar etc but apart from that everything will be redirected... Students on the other hand I havnt got quite figured out. I know that i will be redirecting everything like, documents, start menu, desktop etc but was wondering what to do with their profiles. Presumably, in AD if you leave the profile field blank it will just use a local profile? and it will create a new one on each machine each time a user logs on for the first time?
TechSupp Posted July 18, 2012 Author Posted July 18, 2012 Hmmmm...so its looking like a good decision then. If delete the local profile (we do at the moment at shutdown with a delprof2 script) what benefit would that have? Any downsides? Saving settings on a prog etc? Dont know if its a contributing factor but the test PC we have is amazing when logging on to the domain to get to the desktop. Was an age before but now its w7, from cold boot its to logon screen in no time and to desktop from login blistering (comparted to existing xp, must do a comparisson test). this is not a mega pc either, a dual core with 2gb ram, even a test celeron 2.6 with 1gb will beat the existing xp one!
tbd Posted September 20, 2012 Posted September 20, 2012 Sorry to join the discussion so late in the day... I was wondering if there was anyone using roaming profiles with their students..? We're trying to implement Microsoft Lync and found that the client doesn’t really work with mandatory profiles, which all students and staff have at the moment. We've been told by Nexus (Exeter) all the schools they deal with have roaming profiles across the board. Those of you using local profiles, do you delprof on shutdown? Also do you find this has a performance hit when you logon? Sorry similar questions as TechSupp... Thanks in advance...
has Posted November 30, 2012 Posted November 30, 2012 Hi, Were also moving over to Win 7 next easter/summer and looking into changing from roaming profile to local profiles for staff with folder redirection etc. What i wanted to find out was, were using Outlook for staff email which creates a mail profile on their roaming profile. How do you overcome this with a mandatory/local profile. For example, when they first login to a computer, they will need to go through the process of setting up email account. Next time they login, they wouldnt need to do it. But if they go to another computer, they would need to go through the process of setting up their account again. Any ideas on how to over come this? Haz
burgemaster Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 Hi, Were also moving over to Win 7 next easter/summer and looking into changing from roaming profile to local profiles for staff with folder redirection etc. What i wanted to find out was, were using Outlook for staff email which creates a mail profile on their roaming profile. How do you overcome this with a mandatory/local profile. For example, when they first login to a computer, they will need to go through the process of setting up email account. Next time they login, they wouldnt need to do it. But if they go to another computer, they would need to go through the process of setting up their account again. Any ideas on how to over come this? Haz Direct connection to exchange instead of cached exchange mode? Disable with the office ADMs
Ashm Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 Hi, Were also moving over to Win 7 next easter/summer and looking into changing from roaming profile to local profiles for staff with folder redirection etc. What i wanted to find out was, were using Outlook for staff email which creates a mail profile on their roaming profile. How do you overcome this with a mandatory/local profile. For example, when they first login to a computer, they will need to go through the process of setting up email account. Next time they login, they wouldnt need to do it. But if they go to another computer, they would need to go through the process of setting up their account again. Any ideas on how to over come this? HazIf you have autodiscover set up (assuming you're running Exchange 2007/2010) there's a reg key you can set which configures Outlook automatically so Outlook will load without any prompts on first login - see here 1
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