Mandatory Profile difference in XP

[Guest]

Hello
I work in a university computer lab and we use mandatory profiles as part of the way we lock down public computers. I have noticed with Windows XP, when I reboot the computer, the profile folder for the mandatory profile is removed. Of course, if the user covered by the mandatory profile logs in again, the mandatory profile is downloaded from the server. However, in W2k, the profile remained on the hard drive and was not deleted at reboot

Is there any way to get this same behavior in XP?

 

[Mike Brearley]

Start/Run gpedit.msc

Go to Computer Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ System \ User
Profiles

See if disabling the 'Delete cached copies of roaming proflies' makes a
difference.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley

Hello,
I work in a university computer lab and we use mandatory profiles as part

of the way we lock down public computers. I have noticed with Windows XP,
when I reboot the computer, the profile folder for the mandatory profile is
removed. Of course, if the user covered by the mandatory profile logs in
again, the mandatory profile is downloaded from the server. However, in
W2k, the profile remained on the hard drive and was not deleted at reboot.

 

[Pat Wisch]

Start/Run gpedit.msc

Go to Computer Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ System \ User
Profiles

See if disabling the 'Delete cached copies of roaming proflies' makes a
difference.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley

Mike,
I tried that group policy setting, and it didn't make a difference.
Whenever I reboot the PC, the local copy of the mandatory profile is
removed.

Disheartening- there is very little info on mandatory profiles
anywhere on the Microsoft site, that I've been able to find
anyway.....

 

[Guest]

Pat - we are seeing the exact same problem as yourself - this is a problem for us as it delays logon times - from around 10 seconds they increase to about 40 seconds.

We have tracked it down to a key
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList


Change Ref count from 0 to 1 for the profile and the mandatory profile will not delete after reboot. However, when the student logs of - this key is changed back to 0 and we have the same problem.

As you state - this does not occur in Win2k - anyone have any ideas?

Craig

 

[Pat Wisch]

Pat - we are seeing the exact same problem as yourself - this is a problem for us as it delays logon times - from around 10 seconds they increase to about 40 seconds.

We have tracked it down to a key
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList


Change Ref count from 0 to 1 for the profile and the mandatory profile will not delete after reboot. However, when the student logs of - this key is changed back to 0 and we have the same problem.

As you state - this does not occur in Win2k - anyone have any ideas?

Craig

Thanks to Craig from one of the Microsoft XP newsgroups, I have a
partial answer....
There is a registry value called RefCount in
HKLM\software\microsoft\windows
NT\currentversion\ProfileList\some-long-assed-user-SID

When the RefCount DWORD value is set to 1, the locally cached
mandatory profile remains after a reboot. The problem is that whenever
the mandatory profile user logs off, the RefCount value is set to 0.
If RefCount is 0, the locally cached mandatory profile is deleted.

I also determined that the locally cached mandatory profile is removed
at system startup, not when the system shuts down. (I logged in using
the recovery console, and the locally cached mandatory profile was
still there; after I let the system boot up, it was gone).

I have no idea what the RefCount value is supposed to do....it appears
that normally it is a value of 1 when a user is logged in, and a value
of 0 when the user logs out. It doesn't look like it matters what
type of profile it is, when a user is logged in, the value is 1; when
the user is logged out, the value is 0.

In any case, it may be a possible workaround. I've been messing around
with a group policy shutdown script that will set the RefCount value
to 1 at system shutdown. I use a utility called regini.exe to do this.
It worked, but I'll need to set that value for three different user
accounts with mandatory profiles that all share the same group policy.


It still would be better to have some nice clean registry setting that
would stick and prevent the mandatory profile from being deleted!