Roaming Profiles

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Thanks for looking at this. I hope you can answer this for me.

My sceneario:
In my house, there are 2 desktops running Win XP Pro SP2, and a laptop
running Win 2000. All of these are connected via a P2P network. I have user
accounts on all systems.

My question:
Can I set up one of the desktops and the laptop to load a profile from the
other desktop (my primary system), without getting a server? It's not too
important, but I would like to use one centralized profile for myself on all
computers.

-Chris
 
The answer is yes. Sorta.

Try this:
1) Map a Network drive to the particular Desktop.
2) Copy the profile that you want to that system. (If it is already there,
then skip this).
3) Go into the registry and point your profile to this location.

Profile Location is stored at:
"\\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList"

You may need to hunt around the numbered profiles a bit to find the one you
are looking for, and I suggest logging in using the same name for each
system.

This has not been tested, but I know a little about it since I work with
Roaming Profiles a bit. Also, I can't say what would happen should you log
on to two computers at the same time. Use this information at your own
risk.
 
I'm not quite sure I fully understand your answer. From what I understand, it
seem you are telling me to copy the profile from my primary maching (Win XP
desktop) to the other desktop system and laptop. If this is what you are
saying, that's not what I want to do. I want it to work just like a roaming
profile, but without the server. I just want Windows on the secondary desktop
and laptop to follow the directory path that I specify to the primary desktop
to run the profile, remotely so-to-speak.
-Chris
 
Christopher said:
I'm not quite sure I fully understand your answer. From what I
understand, it seem you are telling me to copy the profile from my
primary maching (Win XP desktop) to the other desktop system and
laptop. If this is what you are saying, that's not what I want to do.
I want it to work just like a roaming profile, but without the server.
I just want Windows on the secondary desktop and laptop to follow the
directory path that I specify to the primary desktop to run the
profile, remotely so-to-speak. -Chris
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but you can only have roaming profiles with a server
operating system.

Malke
 
No. You would need to copy whatever profile you want to the main computer.
If the profile is already there, then skip that particular step.

Then, go to the part in the registry that points to the profile. For me,
that would be here:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-1343924981-790525478-725345543\ProfileImagePath"

At this point, my registry key ProfileImagePath is set to:
"%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\myname"

I would change that registry path to something like:
"Z:\Documents and Settings\myname"

With the Z:\ path being the mapped network drive pointing to the computer
with the profile that I want to have loaded.

The problem with doing it this way is that Windows wasn't really designed to
do it this way. Logging on to more than one computer at a time may have
oddball results (couldn't say for sure, but it seems logical).

Another thing that is likely to happen is that if the computer you are
logging on to doesn't find the profile one day (such as the network drive
being down, or the main computer being shut off), it will most likely create
another profile for that login name and point to it. At which point you
would need to re-point to the old profile again in the registry.

All of this isn't really roaming profile, it is just pointing to an
alternate location to read the profile. I often have to do this because I
keep my C:\ drive in a frozen state, and thus have had to move my profiles
to a D:\ drive to save my changes.

hope this helps... goodluck.
 
Thank you. I thought there was some sort of trick like the one you described,
but wasn't sure. Thanks again.

-Chris
 
Back
Top