Configure Roaming Profiles

When you sit at a computer and change its attributes, such as the wallpaper, when someone else logs on they still have the environment that they last had when they logged on, and this is achieved using a profile for the user which is stored locally in the %systemroot%/profiles/, e.g. d:\winnt\profiles\savillj.

If the user then sat at a different computer they would not have their setup, to achieve a profile that follows the user to different NT machines (a roaming profile) you need to store the users profile on a network share, that can be downloaded each time the user logs on. When the user logs off the network profile is updated, and a copy of the profile is saved locally. To configure roaming profiles perform the following

1. Start User Manager for Domains (Start - Programs - Administrative Tools - User Manager for Domains)
2. Double click on the user
3. Click the Profiles button
4. In the User Profile Path enter the network share location where the profile should go, \\\\ , e.g. \\bugsbunny\profiles\savillj.
5. Click OK to finish

To make the profile mandatory, i.e. the user cannot change it, rename the file ntuser.dat to ntuser.man which is located at the base of the profile location.

As mentioned earlier, profiles are cached locally to machines, however this can be disabled by performing the following

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
2. Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
3. Create a value called DeleteRoamingCache of type DWORD (Edit - New - Dword)
4. Set the value to 1