Re: Roaming Profile Issues

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Sorry if this topic is redundant

I have a LAN with a mix of Win2K-SP4 and WinXP-SP2 workstations. They
were acquired piece-meal. They're running Office 2000 (retail, OEM,
Pro, SMB) of one sort or other and they're all joined to a
Win2K3-SBS-SP1 domain with Exchange 2003 SP4. They adamantly refuse
to consider Office 2K7 or Vista.

Forget about using roaming profiles if your workstations are running
different versions of Windows. Even if you're all on the same version of
Windows, you should bewary of nonstandardized software (and versions of
same).

They have a couple of temporary employees who need to roam around from
one workstation to another as they come available. They have domain
logins and each also has a POP3 email account to be handled by the
Outlook 2K3 client.

Why? All your mail should be hosted on the Exchange server. Avoid using
Internet mail in Outlook at all costs.

I thought I'd be able to enable these folks with roaming profiles but
it's not working as I hoped. I created the profiles on a WinXP-SP2
machine and copied them to the SBS server according to KB324749.

Hmm. That's a weird article & isn't the way I've ever created roaming
profiles - I'm putting my 'boilerplate' at the bottom of this message.

then had to update the Users in ActiveDirectory on SBS to point to the
profile location for them.

I tried testing on Win2K and ran into a buzz-saw with Outlook 2K3. It
refuses to accept user credentials to connect to exchange server. I
don't know what else isn't going to work because this is an
insuperable obstacle -- those POP3 accounts HAVE to be serviced by
these users.

Try creating a new Outlook profile manually in control panel | mail. But
again, I suggest you abandon this idea until (or unless) you can force a
homogeneous workstation environment.

Am I going at this the wrong way? Is there some way to achieve the
desired end without huge expense to the client?

Thanks in advance..

General tips:

1. Set up a share on the server. For example - d:\profiles, shared as
profiles$ to make it hidden from browsing. Make sure this share is not set
to allow offline files/caching!

2. Make sure the share permissions on profiles$ indicate everyone=full
control. Set the NTFS security to administrators, system, and users=full
control.

3. In the users' ADUC properties, specify \\server\profiles$\%username% in
the profiles field

4. Have each user log into the domain once from their usual workstation
(where their existing profile lives) and log out. The profile is now
roaming.
5. If you want the administrators group to automatically have permissions to
the profiles folders, you'll need to make the appropriate change in group
policy. Look in computer configuration/administrative templates/system/user
profiles - there's an option to add administrators group to the roaming
profile permissions.

Notes:

* Make sure users understand that they should never log into multiple
computers at the same time when they have roaming profiles. Explain that the
last one out wins, when it comes to uploading the final, changed copy of the
profile.

* Keep your profiles TINY. Redirect My Documents; usually best done to the
user's home directory on the server - either via
group policy (folder redirection) or manually (far less advisable). If you
aren't going to also redirect the desktop using policies, tell users that
they are not to store any files on the desktop or you will beat them with a
stick. Big profile=slow login/logout, and possible profile corruption.

* Note that user profiles are not compatible between different OS versions,
even between W2k/XP. Keep all your computers. Keep your workstations as
identical as possible - meaning, OS version is the same, SP level is the
same, app load is (as much as possible) the same.

* Do not let people store any data locally - all data belongs on the server.

* The User Profile Hive Cleanup Utility should be running on all your
computers. You can download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1B286E6D-8912-4E18-B570-42470E2F3582&displaylang=en




W


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