Windows XP Pro and dual profiles 2

[dirkfour4]

I'm running XP Pro with Novell servers...on occasion (twice in the last 24 Hrs.!) a user logs on and XP creates another profile of course throwing all the user settings off.

Anyone have a quick fix for this other then saving all the settings, deleting the profiles for that user, rebooting and resetting all the user info?

Would copying one nuser.dat from the new profile to the correct profile work?

 

[linney]

See if anything here is what you are talking about.




HOW TO: Create a Custom Default User Profile (Q305709)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q305/7/09.asp

Force all XP users to use the Default User profile
thread779-334751

 

[bgross22]

You could log onto the novell with the user name and have a generic user name for the local workstation with local admin rights. That way everyone who loggs onto that pc has the same settings except what the novell server script or whatever runs. You can just have all users logon as Administrator to the local workstation. Assuming you have the newest novell client installed. You can make it log into the workstation under the windows tab. Every user will have the same settings. Otherwise, you will have to log on as administrator. Right click on my computer go to properties go under the advance tab. Then under user profiles click on settings highlight the account with the correct settings and click copy to. I just went through all of this at work. I do have step by step instructions if needed. It is really simple just seems to be a pain. Let me know if you want them. Thanks.

 

[dirkfour4]

good stuff you guys came up with, however, right now i'm trying to repair the dual profile problem. Ex: Joe Smith logs into his pc and into the Novell server. (note: he has been logging in without difficulty for several weeks or months) This morning, however, Joe's PC creates a new profile for Joe called jsmith.000 (he normal profile shows as well as jsmith). The active desktop appears (all black screen) with the basic icons on the desktop. We have to go in and reset all the user's icons, reset his/her email, etc.

I'm looking for 1: easy way to repair this; 2) a way to prevent this (assuming it is in the settings of the PC or the Novell server or even the registry).

Hoping someone has seen this before and found the solution.

The other solutions do make sense but will have to be run through the gambit of manager levels to get approval for a 'default' desktop.

Thanks all for your input. Hope I can be of service to others here in the future.

Doug

 

[bgross22]

Ok Doug. I just went through this at my company. The best thing you can do is copy his old user profile to the one just created. It will copy all of his settings ie desktop icons mail profile etc. All you have to do is Right click on my computer go to properties go under the advance tab. Then under user profiles click on settings highlight the account ex:workstation name/jsmithwith the correct settings and click copy to (You will not have the copy to button without admin rights). Find the other user that is new and follow the rest of the instructions. I just went through all of this at work. I do have step by step instructions if needed. It is really simple just seems to be a pain. Let me know if you want them. Thanks. This is not having a default profile just copying the old one that he used to use to the new one he will be using from now on. That way you don't have to go through and reconfigure everything. Like I said before, I do have screenshot insturctions if needed and this is the easiest way if you don't want to use a default profile.

Brandi

 

[dirkfour4]

brandi that would really be appreciated. That way I'm sure to get it right (I did promise the guy it would be right Monday

Many thanks

Doug

 

[linney]

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q318/0/11.asp

Error Message: Windows Cannot Load Your Profile Because It May Be Corrupted (Q318011)

 

[bgross22]

Doug, I can email them first thing monday morning if you can give me an email address before then. thanks.

 

[dirkfour4]

use dirkfour4@attbi.com

and many thanks

 

[nstaff]

Read this MS Document:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314045

I've tried just copying all the files from one profile to another and in my experience that resulted in continuous explorer.exe errors when logged on as the user. The errors are security related and stop if the user is given local admin rights. Brandi, maybe you didn't encounter this problem because your users are less restricted than ours.
That said, if the user has already logged on and a new profile has been created then you can't copy the profile using the users profile tab as it will show up as Account Unknown. All that will be listed is the new empty profile.

I found that MS link tonight and haven't tried it yet but I have tried the copy method and on 95% of the machines I tried it on it did not work. Another thing to keep in mind is that copying the profile via the user profile tab does not copy over the Local Settings folder so even that way the user still isn't the same as before.

Good luck Doug.

Thanks,

Nick

 

[bgross22]

Nick, you are right. All of my users are local admins on the workstation. That was the case so we could copy the profiles. It copied everything needed. Favorites and all which is listed under the local settings folder. I am not sure how restricted your users are. IF the user has already logged on and did not have admin rights you CAN give them admin rights and copy the profile without it coming up as account unknown under the users profile tab. This is talking about XP and not 2000. It is a little different but the concept is the same. I have done this on over 50 machines. Most of them are 2000. As long as the users are in the local admin group and you log on as admininistrator you can copy the profiles with no error. All settings will be there. It is tricky when you are using someone logging onto a domain. It took us a while to figure it out but it can be done with the instructions above. Nick, I have step by step instructios for copying a profile in windows 2000 and we had people come in to help us that don't normally work on computers follow the instructions with no problem. If you need them let me know. I will email them to you.

Thanks,

Brandi

 

[nstaff]

Heya Brandi,

I'm never one to turn down good step-by-step instructions so if you don't mind please send em to nicks@fox.com

I'd also reccomend checking out that link I provided in my last post (though I don't know how I can reccomend it as I've still yet to test it =X) - if it works though it would be a great solution because all it requires is editing the path of one registry key and voila - no need to even copy files.

You are right though Brandi, we keep our users pretty locked down - even more restricted than the defaults for a member of the Users group. That could be the reason why when I copy a profile using the user profiles tab of system properties I don't get the Local Settings folder - because in our ntuser.ini files we have this:
[General]
ExclusionList=Local Settings;Temporary Internet Files;History;Temp;Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook;

which I think is to prevent user specific data from being copied into the default user profile or anyone elses (our favorites folder though sits in the root of the profile not in local settings - maybe a difference between xp and 2k). I'm curious, what caused your profile problem and how did you solve it? For us it was synchronizing AD with NDS and random accounts were being deleted (though only in 3 branch offices, no accounts were lost from our main location - and it's all one domain). Odd huh? We've been running into similar issues with domain members losing the trust relationship occasionally (randomly, not reproducable, Microsoft spent months out here with us and the only conslusion was that Novell was messing it up, which I don't doubt).

Anyway, I look forward to egtting those steps - it'll help me to have something for everyone down on paper (thanks again)!

Nick

 

[bgross22]

Nick,

I am not sure how your network is setup. We had a novell network. Most of our users were split between 98, 2000, and very few on XP. We had all of our users on the 2000 machines logging on to novell with there user names and then logging onto the local workstations as administrator. During our conversion. We switched everything to microsoft 2000 and Nt servers. We have multiple domains because our main headquarters is in dallas. We have a trust to our PDC at our local office. We added all of the 2000 workstations into the PDC. Now with novell gone each user had to logon to the local workstation as there user names, which lost all of the icons and settings that were under administrator. We did not have a default profile setup for any of these machines. We kept gettings errors in the middle of copying pertaining to norton.

Well, it did take a while to figure out how we wanted to approach this. We thought about just copying the desktop folder but then all of the other configurations were lost ie:citrix servers. We need to be able to copy the whole profile. Because they were logging into the local workstation as administrator they needed admin rights. We did not want to give them admin rights to the pdc so it had to be on the local pc itself that they were added to the local admin. It still restricts them as far as the server but opens up the pc for them to do what they want on that workstation. We created the user folders on the server for each individual user and ran a script to give them rights. Most of it worked even though there were a few that did not. I am pretty sure they manually added users over to the nt side because most users had new names.

Have to run. I will try to send those first thing tomorrow.

Thanks,

Brandi