Preventing the Creation of New User Profiles

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have2p

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 15, 2005
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I'm in the process of setting up a small computer lab in a University building. I plan on setting up one model computer with Windows XP and using Ghost Solutions Suite to make an image from it and distribute that image to the other computers.

The computers are all on the same domain and the users login to use the computers with their Active Directory login/password. I've got it all working fine on the model computer, but every time a different user logs in, a folder is created in C:\Documents and Settings for their username. I want every user to use the Default User profile rather than making their own when they log in. How can I accomplish this?
 
the Default User folder is used to create the users' profile folder.

There is no way to keep Windows from creating a new profile folder for each user that logs on, to my knowledge.
 
This is not really possible, you could use manitory profiles but to me that more pain than it is worth. what is the reasoning behind this? preventing people from saving files? allowing users to share files? to try and save disk space?
 
xenios said:
This is not really possible, you could use manitory profiles but to me that more pain than it is worth. what is the reasoning behind this? preventing people from saving files? allowing users to share files? to try and save disk space?
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This. What's your goal?
 
I want to prevent users from saving files as well as prevent the Documents and Settings folder from getting filled with crap. I've seen it on other computer lab computers where users can save things to their desktops and what not, but those files are lost once they log out. How can I do this?
 
I was hoping there was an easier way. I see that I can take away permissions for SYSTEM to write to that folder, would that do it?
 
have2p said:
I was hoping there was an easier way. I see that I can take away permissions for SYSTEM to write to that folder, would that do it?
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You really need to look at SteadyState. It's whole purpose is to do what you are trying to do and its very easy to setup.
 
I played around with SteadyState and can't seem to accomplish what I'm trying to do. I checked "do not store cached copies of locked or roaming user profiles" but a new folder was still created when a user logged on.
 
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have2p said:
I played around with SteadyState and can't seem to accomplish what I'm trying to do. I checked "do not store cached copies of locked or roaming user profiles" but a new folder was still created when a user logged on. Worse still, with SteadyState installed, it takes about 50 seconds for the desktop to load for a user as opposed to around 20 seconds without it installed.
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Hmm... I've setup a couple of Vista SteayState machines and never saw that kind of performance hit. But these were newer dual core machines from a couple years ago.

SteadyState should have cleaned up the profiles after the user logs out. So while you may not be able to control the creation of the profile you shouldn't get junk being stored.
 
heatlesssun said:
Hmm... I've setup a couple of Vista SteayState machines and never saw that kind of performance hit. But these were newer dual core machines from a couple years ago.

SteadyState should have cleaned up the profiles after the user logs out. So while you may not be able to control the creation of the profile you shouldn't get junk being stored.
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I was wrong about the performance hit, that was caused by a separate issue. I'll do some further work with SteadyState.
 
The Documents and Settings stuff needs to exist for programs to run. If you want it to not persist, use SteadyState.
 
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