Arge

just tried your commands on my network and it works fine. have you got microsoft's user profile hive cleanup service installed? might be worth a shot!? otherwise, you could use the group policy to "Delete cached copies of roaming profiles". is it 2003 / XP you're running?

not sure what you meant with by this bit though btw...

yeah, fair enough. although when i did it to change a keyboard layout from us to uk across a network i did it from the users logon script calling a reg file that made the change silently and the users never even noticed, nor did it have any adverse effect on logon performance, even though the change is getting applied each time anyone logs on. so, will you have your own copy of the profile thats been made in the US on your local server or something?

i imagine your best bet would probably be to silently merge registry entries during user logon, through the users logon script for example.

regarding the change across the entire network, thats why i was asking how your network was set up. if your logon scripts are running from AD on the server then you make the reference to the .reg file in that script(s) and share the .reg file from the server. if your doing it locally you'll have to either visit each machine or remote into them and drag the files into the required folders. as for your error message, attach your .bat file as txt like you did with the .reg file and i'll have a look...

ok, this works: (its not the nicest solution, but it does work) create a shared folder somewhere on your users machine. drop your registry file into that folder. (we'll assume your computer is called stephen and your share called silvertheme) check you can access the folder from the run command by typing \\stephen\silvertheme if so you'll see you .reg file. in the users startup folder create a .bat file with the line %systemroot%\regedit.exe /s \\stephen\silvertheme\theme.reg log off and back on again a couple of times and it should work. its a little crude, but i've tested it a few times now and it works.

right. let me explain a bit more about how mine worked... when the user logs on, they run a .bat file which is stored on the server in the sysvol folder and connects their network drives and printers. this .bat file is a property of their user account in Active Directory. I therefore added the line %systemroot%\regedit.exe /s \\\\.reg to the user's logon script (.bat file) and shared the registry file from a folder on the network that everyone had access to. The result being that when the .bat is run at logon it references the .reg file and makes the registry change silently. does this sound something you could replicate on your network? i'm still working on your problem btw

ok, so rather than do it locally you could make the change via the server. when the user logs on, do they run a logon script from the server? if so is it a .bat file?

is the computer not part of a domain then?

stephen, have you got the actual login script that you are using? not just the reg file you are merging?

preferences is a 2008 feature isn't it? they sound pretty useful...

Hi there, I've done this before to merge a registry change for users' keyboard layout. Not sure how your script is structured, but mine was tagged onto the bottom of the user's logon script as follows: %systemroot%\regedit.exe /s \\\\.reg the /s after "regedit.exe" makes it a silent merge so the user doesn't have to intervene. hope that helps...let me know, Arge