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Page last modified:  12/29/02 02:15 PM

Roaming User Profiles

• Create a share on a server and share it.  Ensure the Everyone group has full control permissions
• Create a user account template for the creating a profile.  On the profile tab in the account properties, type the path of the profile share followed by the user wildcard.  Ex:  \\computername\sharename\%username%.
• Log on with the template account and set up the desktop the way you want it.
• Log back on as the administrator.  Go to system properties, user profiles tab and select your template account.  It should be listed as a local profile at this point.
• Select Copy To and in the copy profile to box, type  \\computername\sharename\%username%
• In the permitted to use box, select the user or group that you want to use the profile.

The profile will now become a roaming profile.  It may not take effect until the second logon. 

To make this a mandatory profile, navigate to each users profile directory and change the file name from ntuser.dat to ntuser.man.  This will no prevent users from changing the profile, but it will not save any settings on exit.

To further lock down your desktop, combine roaming profiles with Windows 2000 group policy or Windows NT system policy to take away the tools that users need to change the profile.