how does delprof determine inactive profiles

[bookouri]

Im planning to use delprof to clean up old profiles on XP Pro workstations. I did some tests and it seemed to work as advertised, except that I cant figure out how it determines what profiles are inactive. I ran it for 120 days and it deleted a lot of old profiles, but it left some profiles with "modified dates" over a year old. Im guessing that delprof does not use the "modified date" of the profile to figure out what is inactive and what is not.

I did some searches but cant find anything. Does anybody happen to know what delprof is looking for to make its determination??

thanks in advance

 

[linney]

I ran it for 120 days". Was that how long it ran on your system or was that the following parameter setting?

Were you using a Startup script to run it over a period of time? I always thought that the profiles were selected via the "d:" parameter you supply in the program?

"/d:days: This parameter specifies the number of days after which Delprof.exe considers the profiles as inactive. Profiles that have not been used for a period of time that is longer than the specified value are deleted."

How To Delete User Profiles by Using the User Profile Deletion Utility (Delprof.exe) in Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315411/

Using delprof.exe from normal user's logon script

http://www.developersdex.com/asp/message.asp?p=1825&ID=<u5XLwNSpIHA.1580@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl>

 

[bookouri]

Yep, i did the /d parameter for 120 days or whatever, but after it ran there were still parameters with dates of over a year in the past. So I dont know how the delprof determines if the profile has or has not been used in the /d: time period. It doesnt appear to be using the "modified date/time" stamp of the profile folder.

 

[cmeagan656]

The "modified date/stamp" time of the profile folder is not indicative of the last time that the profile was used. For example, I access my account and my admin account daily but the "modified date/time" stamps are 1/13/09 2:08 PM and 8/26/08 4:44 PM respectively.

I believe delprof is looking for the last modified date of any file, folder, or registry entry related to the profile.

Also, when running delprof make sure that you don't run it agains the All Users and Default User profiles.

Cheers.

 

[smah]

I'm not sure that it checks anything date related in the profile folders. It seems to check against the user accounts, not the folder datestamps. It will never delete the 'all users' or 'default user' because there is no real interactive user account direclty connected to those folders.

(Speculation from here on - I've never tested this)
In addition, I suspect that it won't remove the corresponding folder structure if the user account no longer exists. For example, if you use the old user managment utility (control userpasswords2) to delete a user account and leave the profile folders, I don't think that delprof.exe will ever remove them.

 

[bookouri]

I didnt think delprof would touch the default/all users profile. It will delete the administrator profile though if I remember right. I hadnt though about users that no longer exist though.. I have dozens of them all over the place.. I wonder if delprof would get its date/time stamp from AD though.. if the user is still logging on every day, it would not delete a profile on a machine that the user never uses anymore. Say a user who used to work in building A and now only works in building B. Old profiles no longer needed on machines in building A would be left alone and taking up space.