XP roaming profiles

I have a general how to question -

How do I setup roaming XP profiles on a Windows 2k advanced server. Here's what I've tried. I get the user's password from them, logon as them and setup their profile the way they want it to be, then i go to the server, go to their login information and add the profile path (which I assume when the XP box shuts down it says saving settings - it checks with the server to see where to save it to....), then logoff the workstation with that user and watch it say saving settings...

When that user goes to another computer and logs on - after a long while - it brings over all their icons and what not as saved on the other computer, but whenever they click on anything (i.e. my computer, any icons on the desktop, start button), the computer just locks up.

What am I missing or is there a better way? I have the computer connected to the domain properly - and I add the user to the initial workstation as the computer admin for when I'm creating the desktop and such the way I want...but then on the other computer - it locks them up?

Couldn't you do it with policies and scripts.

what OS is your PDC running? samba or other? more info :)

Might I suggest that you login as Administrator, create their profiles and password, tell them to change their password. This should alter both the roaming profile and their local profile.

The users should be set up in work groups, with appropriate authorities. You make any "fine adjustments" after that

I think that you are probably trying to do too much in one go?

Quote:

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logon as them and setup their profile the way they want it to be, then i go to the server, go to their login

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That is the problem I suspect...............................I have a gut feel that the "Bastard Sysadmin From Michegan" is already preparing a tarring and feathering, followed by a necktie party :p

Seriously, do it in easy stages and it will work :)

EDIT: I am assuming that they are not already members of a workgroup with admin rights :eek:

Cheers

If your advanced Win2K server is running PDC, and you authenticating against it with the user's login, then the account information is stored on the PDC. So, in AD Users and Computers, you edit the account to set up the profile path (and share drive path, if you use that) you should get the results you are describing (takes a long time on the first login).

However, if your user moves to another system, that system must have an identical image or an identical installation for the icons and shortcuts to work. If there is anything at all different, most of them won't work.

Also, you should look in group policies for the users and consider configuring file redirection. Set up an H: drive Home Folder (or whatever drive letter you want to use in your domain), and redirect the My Documents, My Pictures, Desktop and other things to this personal share. That will speed up the login process a great deal.

We generally configure the workstation to have standard app shortcuts and such set up in the c:\Documents and Settings\All Users folder. That way, they always show up for all logins and always work.

Shortcuts set up on user profiles may not always work.

On Win2k/XP machines, you can change the type of profiles by right-clicking on 'My Computer', selecting 'Properties' and then clicking on the 'Advanced' tab, 'User Profiles' button, highlight the profile, 'Change Type' button.
This is all from memory, so it might be off:)

I think Rapier covered most of what I was going to say but I will point out a few things. After authenticating on the PDC the user profile is copied to the local machine in Documents and Settings and stored as a locally cached profile. If a local profile already exists for that user name it will create the folder as username.DOMAIN. Make sure you delete the old local profile as sometimes Windows will default to this one by mistake. Also depending on your network speed you may want to fine tune the group policy for the local domain which includes things like allowing the user to log on if the profile cannot be retrieved,destroying the local profile on logoff(this insures the profiles are kept up to date every time, otherwise you may notice things like wallpaper do not update correctly) and quite a few others. BEWARE!: roaming profiles can become REALLY slow if your not careful. You dont want to copy 10gigs of .MP3s from your server everytime someone logs in just because its stored in My Music. Also as Rapier said your shortcuts may not work right, one thing I do is change the shortcuts to UNC's instead of local file paths (aka: \\Appserver\AppPath\App instead of D:\AppPath\App) which is good if you have a server which houses most of your Apps and saves space on your local HDD's! :)

-Maestr0