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Copy local profiles 1

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dvornik

Technical User
Sep 10, 2002
76
US
We are trying to make all PCs login on local profiles with identical settings. For some reason if we copy a profile (no matter how) the machine refuses to use it. It creates a new one temporarily. Like if we have a profile User1 it creates User1.Machine1 and removes it on logoff. It has to be a local profile, we can't use roaming.
 
If user logging on has no local profile already on machine, 2k will create one based on 'Default User' profile in Documents and Settings. So, if create user as you want everybody to be and copy it to Default User using the System Properties/User Profiles/Copy To function (making it available to everyone), all 'new' (ie, no existing profile)users on that machine will get that defaul one.

If you want whole domain to pick up this profile, create a foder called 'Default User' (give everyone permissions)under the netlogon share on the server, and use the copy to function above to copy the profile to this folder.

Hope this helps.
 
What I've tried doing is to let it create user profile folder and then copy existing profile into that folder (with Copy Profile feature or manually). For some reason if I do that the user stops using that profile and creates a new one combined of the profile we created and the default profile. I don't think we have anything in our group policys that would make it delete the profile.

I'll try your suggestions tomorrow. We have thoroughly customized settings, so it takes more than an hour to customize each machine and each time I miss something.

We are a school - all our machines have normally mandatory profiles, but in the open lab we can't use them cause we have an OS X mac controlling color printing and it would see all machines as the same user - we need to be able to see where the job came from to manually release it.


 
Cool, Default User partially worked. One thing that keeps bugging me is that settings for a bunch of applications still have to be manually adjusted. Like, at least I have to dismiss "register today" dialogs from Adobe progs, first-time Today settings from Autocad, Maxtreme prompt from 3ds max and so on. Oh, and that damn Netscape. Is there a way to avoid running each program at least once on each machine?
 
Well I've always run those things before I copy the profile from within the logon/profile I'm going to copy from so that the updates/changes follow the controlling profile to the default profile.
 
Did you run all those programs at least once (to clear such things) in your 'model' user before copying it to Default User?
If yes, then presume they must work on user id or something associated uniquely with each user - then set flag when you run first time. So you'd need to know what flag they set so you can put together a registry import which will set flags as soon as user logs on first time.
If no, then obviously try that!
 
That sounds very interesting, cause I don't know what set flag or registry import are. I think it could be the answer since I did run all the apps before copying profiles.

The only thing I used to monitor registry activity was ntregmon. I guess set flag records certain changes, sorry for my ignorance.
 
Sorry, not your ignorance, I wasn't clear. I think those programs will set a value in the registry for each user which says 'yes, this user has run me'. If they don't find that entry, then you get the popups etc. So, if you can find where they put those entries (and I would also use ntregmon - if its the sysinternals app - to try to trap this - not always easy!), you can use the 'export' function of regedit to save each one to a file. Then you can combine the files into a regedit import file (ie, entries to merge into registry) which you can put into users logon scripts (regedit /S importfilename.reg), so that they will have the 'yes, this user has run me' entry set too.

This may all be more trouble than its worth! - and as I've not actually tried it with your apps, I may be talking through my hat!
 
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