Understanding User Profiles

A user profile is made of up of all the settings used to configure a user's desktop experience. Elements stored in a user's profile are Internet Explorer favorites, mapped drive and printer configurations, email profiles, My Documents folder data, application-specific configurations or settings, desktop settings, and much more. Administrators frequently need to update or reconfigure a user's profile when a configuration change is necessary or if a new profile is being created.

Examining Profile Types

Several types of user profiles are available, giving administrators greater flexibility when it comes to customizing and automating profile settings. Although each profile type described in the following sections offers certain features, many profile settings can also be configured using Group Policy.

Local Profile

A local user profile is stored on the local server or workstation's hard disk. This type of profile is maintained and used only on a single machine. If this profile is lost or the user moves to a new machine, a new profile must be created and configured manually. Local profiles are always stored on the local machine, regardless of whether the user is logging on with a roaming or mandatory profile.

Roaming Profile

A roaming profile is stored on a server file share and follows a user to whatever server or workstation he logs in to. Upon logon, the roaming profile is downloaded from the server share to the local machine. The user then runs the profile from the local cached copy of the roaming profile throughout the entire session. Upon logoff, the profile is saved back to the server share location with any updates intact.

Because roaming profiles must be copied down from the server during logon and pushed back to the server upon logoff, this process can extend user logon/logoff intervals. The bigger the profile size, the longer the wait. Here's an example. One of our former clients complained that certain users required 15 minutes to log on and 15 minutes to log off. Upon investigation, we found out that these users had more than 400MB of temporary Internet files and the client was on a 10MB network. To fix this problem, we created a Group Policy setting, and configured Internet Explorer to delete all temporary Internet files upon exiting. This reduced the overall profile size and immediately improved logon/logoff performance.

Other folders to consider when planning to use roaming profiles are the My Documents and Desktop folders. Either advise your users to save data directly to their home network drive, or redirect both the Desktop and My Documents folders to a server to eliminate the need for the data stored within these folders to be uploaded and downloaded with the profile during logon/logoff.

Mandatory Profile

A mandatory profile is the same as a roaming profile except that changes made to the profile settings are not saved to the server upon logoff. This type of profile is most commonly used in classroom environments in educational institutions or for public shared access workstations such as those found in an Internet cafe. To change a profile to a mandatory profile, configure the profile as you like and log out of that user account. Then, with an Administrator account, locate the profile folder and rename the Ntuser.dat file to Ntuser.man.

Default User Profile

On each Windows 2000 and Windows XP system that was not upgraded from a previous version of the operating system, a default profile folder exists. This profile is used when a user logs on to the system for the first time and her account is not configured to download a roaming or mandatory profile. To create a common profile for all new users when they log on, configure a profile using a test user account and save this profile to the default profile folder.

Temporary Profile

A temporary profile is used when a user with a roaming profile cannot locate the profile folder on the server. When this happens, the machine first attempts to load this user's profile from a cached copy on the local profile. This profile might be outdated but will most likely have all the correct information. If a user has never logged on to the workstation but specifies a roaming profile that cannot be located or does not exist yet, the temporary profile will become that user's profile and be saved up to the server upon logoff, if possible. In other words, if no local copy of the profile exists, the temporary profile is built from the default profile folder.

All Users Profile

The All Users profile folder houses profile settings that you want to apply to all users logging on to the system. The settings, usually desktop and Start menu customizations, are added to the user's existing profile. The All Users profile additions are not carried over or saved to the roaming or local profile. These settings are machine specific only.

Template Profiles

When new users are added to an organization, their profiles need to be created from scratch or possibly from a custom script that leverages resource kit tools to minimize the tasks necessary to configure the profiles. To simplify this process even more, you could create template profile folders and save them to a server location. When a new user is created, this profile can be copied to the desired profile location and can be used as a profile starting point for that user. The process to create a template profile is the same as creating a default profile, outlined in the next section, but the location where the profile is saved may vary.

Creating a Default Profile

You can create a default profile by logging on to a workstation and manually configuring the desktop settings as desired, including network shortcuts, desktop shortcuts, printers, mapped drives, environmental settings such as path temp file location, and Internet settings. Most of these tasks can also be performed using Group Policy and logon scripts, but configuring a default profile ensures that the desired settings are delivered to each user regardless of whether the user is a local or domain user or if the policy is applied correctly.

To create a default profile, follow these steps:

1.	Log on to a workstation with a standard local or domain user account, with the same level of access a standard user will have. For this example, use an account called TemplateUser1.
2.	Configure the profile the way you want it. Create desktop settings, Internet settings, or whatever is necessary for a standard user.
3.	Log off the workstation. The profile is then saved to the c:\Documents and Settings\TemplateUser1 directory.

Copying Profiles for the Default User Profile

To make a profile the default profile, you must copy the files to the default user profile folder. To copy the profile, perform the following steps:

1.	Log in with an Administrator account.
2.	Choose Start, Control Panel.
3.	Double-click the System applet.
4.	Select the Advanced tab and click the Settings button in the User Profiles section.
5.	Select the correct profile, as shown in Figure 19.7, and click the Copy To button. Figure 19.7. Selecting the profile to copy.
6.	In the Copy To window, enter the path to the default user directory. If necessary, click Browse and find the correct folder. The default location is C:\Documents and Settings\Default User.
7.	You don't need to change the Permitted to Use section, so click OK to complete this task.