Roaming Profiles in XP

[elrey103]

We just finally got our company to upgrade their 4 servers from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 Server. The "main server" that the other 3 connect to is Windows 2000 Advanced Server and the other 3 are Windows 2000 Server (or rather 2 of the 3 are and the 3rd will be upgraded soon).

My question is this....on the NT network, all Windows 98 SE users could just walk up to any computer and log in to the network using their network ID. My question is, how do I get it to do this if I upgrade the PC's to Windows XP (in other words, how do I make the old Windows NT logins work on an XP desktop PC connecting to the network. All I've figured out is how to manually add a profile to the box so that you can use that login (or any other one you manually add). I can't get it to pull the users off of the server and allow any of those users to login.

I think this might be because I need to make the roaming profiles - but am looking for a little how to on this?

Thanks in adavance.

[whizkid2300]

Here this should help.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314478

whizkid2300

[thehorse13]

I assume that you have a domain setup. You need to add your XP clients to the domain.
Right click on your "My Computer" Icon
Select Network Identification
Select Properties

Using an account that has rights to join members to the domain, add your domain name. You will be prompted for the credentials of the account that has the ability to join hosts to the domain. Once you do this, you should be able to grab your profiles and add them to the local XP box.

This *should* take care of you if I understand your question properly.

[Pecosian]

Something like a Windows 2000 domain then? As far as I know WinXP should work with 2000 domains. As far as setting them up, I have no real experience so I can't help you but I do know you'll have to use the Advanced Server to set up a domain controller where you can control all user names and access on the network. If you've ever worked with NIS on *nix then it's the same idea but different implementations. Hope I've given you somewhere to start anyways.

[DeadCr0w]

Originally posted here by Pecosian
Something like a Windows 2000 domain then? As far as I know WinXP should work with 2000 domains. As far as setting them up, I have no real experience so I can't help you but I do know you'll have to use the Advanced Server to set up a domain controller where you can control all user names and access on the network. If you've ever worked with NIS on *nix then it's the same idea but different implementations. Hope I've given you somewhere to start anyways.

WinXP does work in a win2000 Active Directory and you do not need Advanced Server to set up a domain, Win2000 Server will do!

As far as the question asked goes, thehorse13 solution should work.

[infosecguru2]

Are you asking how you would allow users access to their profile from different computers without having to reconfigure it each time? If so, you would have to enable roaming profiles. You would do that by creating a share on a file server and put the user profiles inside. Then in the user configuration properties in AD, you can set the location of the user's profile to their profile folder on the server.

EX:

C:\profiles Shared: Users read/write,admins full control,system full control
--hax0rbot Admins full control, hax0rbot modify

Set users profile to C:\profiles\hax0rbot

[Maestr0]

You can also use group policy(MMC snap-in) to destroy locally cached profiles (placed in \\localhost\Documents and Settings) when a user logs off, this will keep the profile updated if you want wallpapers and such to roam each time you log on. Group policy snap-in has some other profile stuff which is useful as well.

-Maestr0