Moving away from Roaming Profiles

[crc-ict]

Another question for the edugeek geniuses from my new school with the confusing network...

 

Is there a simple, painless way to move away from roaming profiles. I am getting far too many complaints from teachers waiting ages for profiles of nearly 1GB to download over naff wireless connections when they log on.

 

In my opinion, wherever and however you log on, it takes far too long and I would like to stop using roaming profiles and use folder redirection and Group Policy to control things.

 

The network was setup before I arrived and I'm having trouble figuring out how and why some things were done!

 

Is it possible to make the switch easily, or would I be better taking a long, deep breath and starting over again with a new domain on the new server we have waiting to be used?

 

I'm thinking of using LNM to acheive this, considering I am only at that school one day a week.

 

A silly question as a side note, can an XP PC be attached to more than one domain?

 

Cheers,

Chris.

[ruggie_uk]

You could simply remove the roaming profile configuration and replace it with a mandatory profile or no profile at all. You should certainly discuss this with the users first as if they are downloading 1gb then they probably have downloaded all their take that mp3's to the desktop too so they will need to move them first.

 

XP can only be attached to more than one domain if the domains are trusted to each other.

 

This may have changed so if anyone knows differently, please correct me but I'm almost certain this is the case still.

[sidewinder]

Really wouldnt recommend a new domain for something as minor as this!

 

All you need to do is create the mandatory profile, tweak it to what you want (there are step by step instructions in the edugeek wiki IIRC) and point user accounts to it

Then just set up folder redirection for My Documents and start menu/desktop (if you require)

 

Also, assuming you are not using any redirected folders at the minute , you will either need to keep their old profiles and redirect to My Documents in there, or copy them out of each folder with a script or similar

 

Believe me I know exactly what you're going through with the confusion about what your predecessor has done. I was the same, everyone, including kids had roaming profiles and it was a nightmare. I think it was set up with the best of intentions originally, they probably just didnt know a better way

[Ric_]

Really, this is a two step process...

 

1. Copy the My Documents folders to a sensible folder structure (e.g. \Users\Yeargroup\username)

2. Redirect My Documents for the GPOs to reflect the new location.

 

Should be as simple as that... just watch out for permissions and ownership.

[crc-ict]

Cheers for that everyone. Sounds really simple!

 

Thanks for the help as always :-)

[Ric_]

Cheers for that everyone. Sounds really simple!

 

Thanks for the help as always :-)

 

Just remember... backup, backup and BACKUP befoe you do anything! Profiles have a funny way of disappearing never to be seen again!!!!

[ajbritton]

Another gotcha with redirected folders is when you come to migrate them to a new server. Unless you can guarantee that your new server will have the same name (in which case you can just move the files and recreate the root shares), it's best to implement DFS so that the redirection target is not directly linked to a particular server.

[rclough]

were having a similar issue and we simply limited the size of their roaming profile size in GPO to be max of 10mb.

this was we force them to cut down on the c*** they have on the desktop and have them save it to their H: drive where we can back it up.

 

Works for us.

[srochford]

Another gotcha with redirected folders is when you come to migrate them to a new server. Unless you can guarantee that your new server will have the same name (in which case you can just move the files and recreate the root shares), it's best to implement DFS so that the redirection target is not directly linked to a particular server.

 

An alternative is just to use a "dummy" name - eg the server with our home folders has a "real" name of tconwl22 but the users map to \\home - there's a DNS alias which links it all together. This makes it easy to put in a new server; you just change that alias.

 

If you want to do this then you need to be aware of http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281308 - basically, Windows won't let you access shares like this unless you disable strict name checking (easy to do; easy to forget and then it all goes wrong :-))

[jrubinstein]

I've just spent some time on this because we are moving into Terminal Services. We NEED roaming profiles because we are using Microsoft Class Server for which the Teacher Client does not work with a mandatory profile. We also had the slow login issues.

 

Try http://www.loginconsultants.nl. They produce (and give away for free!) two fantastic products.

 

1. TCT (True Control Template). This is a group policy adm which extends the standard folder redirection possibilities.

2. FPK (Flexible Profile Kit). This is essentially a combination of vb script and and an extended version of the ms proflwix tool. It saves a users settings for any software to a specified folder when they log off and then reloads them as they log on. Even better, it marks the profile as roaming locally while the user is logged on.

 

Both products are free but you do need to spend a little while getting your head around them before overall deployment.