Re: Same Profile for More than One Network User on Same Machine?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Ken Dibble (balderdash_at_spongemop.com)
Date: 07/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:00:02 -0400

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:02:15 -0500, "Phillip Windell" <@.> wrote:

>"Ken Dibble" <balderdash@spongemop.com> wrote in message
>news:krhgg0tm78oqeqk7rarbabpnjm0f8utg8i@4ax.com...
>> "latest and greatest". The people who should have planned in advance
>> are the MS folks who came up with this cockeyed "profiles" thing in
>> the first place.
>
>They didn't come up with it. It has been that way with Unix style systems
>from the begining, and before that it was "dumb terminals" that were nothing
>more than a monitor and keyboard and did not store anything locally. User
>Profiles is an old technique that MS finally decided was the best way to go
>when they came out with NT. Linux does the same thing following after the
>Unix pattern.

I stand corrected on who invented them.

However, I contend that they are both inconvenient and unnecessary at
times, and a wiser design would have been to provide a way to dispense
with them as needed.

>> I'm still running lots of Win 98 machines with
>> network-authenticated logins, and this isn't even an issue with them.
>
>It is also a home-user operating system with its networking abilities added
>"on the side".

I consider this to be irrelevant since it has done everything I've
asked of it for many, many years. Ideally, I would like an OS with the
simplicity of 98 and the stability of NT server, but that's not
available in the Windows world, and Linux isn't ready for an
organization of basically computer-illiterate users.

>> Planning an entire network in advance is a luxury that small
>
>It isn't a luxery, it is a requirement,...no matter how small they are.

It's an impossibility in the real world to plan in advance for what
Microsoft decides to do 3 or 5 or 10 years hence.

>> Issue 3 - Putting everybody's software on a server and running it
>> there is an invitation to slow performance.
>
>No one is saying to do that and such a situation is rarely done.
>Applications are traditionally loaded and run locally. It is only the
>datastore for the Applications that are centrally located.
>
>> Issue 4 - Putting everybody's data in a central location means that if
>> that data is hosed, perhaps beyond recovery, EVERYBODY's data is
>> hosed, perhaps beyond recovery. That also makes absolutely no sense to
>> me whatsoever. Yes, I back up--but having to restore an entire network
>> before ANYBODY can do ANYTHING is ridiculous, IMO.
>
>You are not backing up and restoring a "network". It is only a single
>machine and very often only the stored files themselves need restored.
>Server hardware is built more studier and is much less likely to fail than a
>simple desktop machine and running a backup tape on a schedule is much more
>dependable than hopping that all the users remeber to make copies of all
>their stuff everytime on every machine and put it in a safe place. At our
>place,...we do both,...most is centrally stored,..I back it up to tape,..and
>users who depend on it the most burn some things to CD periodically

It's not just servers, its wiring and switches. I've never had a
server fail, but I've had the "network" or some node of it fail
frequently--and that will keep people from accessing their centralized
data just as surely as if the server had died.

>> Issue 5 - Organizations use networks for different purposes; we don't
>> all operate on the same assumptions. Our purpose for having a network
>> is primarily to share internet access and internal email. We don't use
>> it for a lot of shared data or printing or such stuff.
>
>...and that is why your management task will become more unmanagable and
>solutions will become more difficult to "invent",...as you are now seeing.

Nah--I'll just give Mary Joe's password and change Joe's when he comes
back. Very simple.

>> Issue 6 - I don't let people set their own passwords; that just makes
>> it harder for me to deal with staff turnover--not to mention stuff
>> like not being able to diagnose and test OE because it won't download
>> email if you don't log in with the right account. I have a list of all
>> accounts and passwords under lock and key. So I can easily deal with
>> situations like the one you described.
>
>I do exactly the same here because that is the way they want it done, and I
>do tend to like it that way. But don't say that too load, there are some
>strange guys in the "security" group that might hear you and they'd come
>over here and beat us both to death with their bare hands.

Yeah, I know about those guys. <g>

>> Issue 7 - Everything I've read suggests that copying one profile to
>> another should have worked. I still don't understand why it didn't.
>
>No there is no way that would have worked unless Joe is gone forever and all
>his "suff" is now going to reside permanently under this other user's
>profile. I don't mean it in an offensive way, but I believe your concepts of
>how a network should be designed and what the pros & cons are of each method
>is not acuarte.

Well, I'm not sure that's true. It certainly does work if both users
are Administrators; I just did it on my development machine a week
ago. The other person who replied here seems to think it should have
worked. Mark Minasi seems to think it should work--and even if copying
one restricted user's profile to another can't work, then copying
Joe's profile to Default User before Mary ever logged on should have
worked.

Ken

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