Roaming profiles with different PC configuration types.

[pvanos]

When a given user with a (mandatory) roaming profile has to access Windows 2K Professional workstations with different software configurations (on a domain with W2003server with AD), how can I make sure that the applications loaded on that particular PC are available to this user ? I suppose it is not merely a matter of copying a shortcut to the all-users desktop ?

Another problem might be different graphic adapters, and corresponding possible resolutions ?

Some applications use registry keys, so I'm not sure if it will help to copy the local administrator profile to the all users profile...
I wonder if "customizing" the all users profile would be a good solution whatsoever to solve my problem ?

Any hints ?

 

[bcastner]

A Roaming Profile only roams the user profile. There are generally no hardware assumptions in the profile. You example of display resolutions, for example, would only be an issue if a specialized mode was only capable on a single workstation. In that instance Win2k will make the best choice it can.

I do not understand the issue of copy the HKCU registry hive to the default user profile. A roaming profile also roams the ntuser.dat (the hive for HKCU). It does not use the default user profile, but the user hive for settings.

I believe you may be mistaking one way of setting up a default profile and making it roaming for a new user, versus taking an existing user profile and making it roaming. The process is quite different.

See:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/management/userdata.asp

 

[pvanos]

bcastner, thanks for your reply.
Link was very useful, although still have issues with redirections not taking place for some reason. I opened on that subject a separate thread in the past (thread931-783739).

In the Step-by-Step Guide to User Data and User Settings, there was a very interesting link to the Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding the Group Policy Feature Set. More particular item Loopback Processing.

I then found MS Knowledge Base Article - 231287 : Loopback Processing of Group Policy; where users may need policy applied to them based on the location of the computer object alone.

I think this can be useful, in conjunction with streamlining my existing collection of machine-type associated profiles.

 

[bcastner]

I think I understand the loopback processing choice. I wrote a well cited article how to handle UNIX print servers using exactly this principle of Group Policy.

But I confess that I do not think loopback processing is the heart and soul of your issue.

That would be an odd permisssions issue: whether for the user in its registry or on the server for the share and NTFS permissions.

This seems more promising an avenue to investigate than loopbacks in Group Policy.

See if you can run the Sysdiff.exe deployment tool. It will be on the Server CD. If the application is not .msi compliant, do this as a packager:

http://www.wininstall.com/FREELE2003/