Microsoft KB Archive/185591

= Guide To Windows NT 4.0 Profiles and Policies (Part 6 of 6) =

Article ID: 185591

Article Last Modified on 3/29/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
 * Microsoft Windows 95

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This article was previously published under Q185591



SUMMARY
This article is the sixth in a series of articles that provides information and procedures for implementing Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Profiles and Policies on client workstations and servers.

A whitepaper is available that contains all of this information and additional flowcharts, diagrams and examples and can be downloaded from the following web page:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/winntas/maintain/prof_pol.mspx?mfr=true

For the other sections of this guide, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

161334 Guide to Windows NT 4.0 Profiles & Policies Part 1 of 6

185587 Guide to Windows NT 4.0 Profiles & Policies Part 2 of 6

185588 Guide to Windows NT 4.0 Profiles & Policies Part 3 of 6

185589 Guide to Windows NT 4.0 Profiles & Policies Part 4 of 6



MORE INFORMATION
                  Windows NT Server Operating System White Paper Guide to Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Profiles and Policies

Copyright 1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Microsoft, the BackOffice logo, MS-DOS, Windows, and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Other product or company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA 0997

FOR MORE INFORMATION

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For more information when configuring your network, refer to the following:

- Windows NT Server Concepts and Planning Guide ( Chapter 3, "Managing  User Work Environments" (part of the Windows NT Server product documentation).

- Kixtart Resource Kit Utility available in the Windows NT Server Resource Kit for version 4.0.

For the latest information on Windows NT Server, check out our World Wide Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/backoffice or the Windows NT Server Forum on the Microsoft Network (GO WORD: MSNTS).

APPENDIX A - FLOWCHARTS 

APPENDIX B - IMPLEMENTING USER PROFILES The following are typical user profile scenarios that you may encounter in the future or may have already encountered. Each of these scenarios includes a brief description of the situation, the current status of the profiles on the server, actions that you need to take to administer the profile properly, any required user action, references to sections of this guide that have more detailed information, and any applicable usage notes.

EXISTING WINDOWS NT 3.5X ROAMING PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 3.5x roaming profile and will continue to log on to Windows NT 3.5x-based computers only.

- What currently exists: A Myuser.usr file exists in the folder \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: None.

- User action: None.

EXISTING WINDOWS NT 3.5X ROAMING PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 3.5x mandatory profile and will continue to log on to Windows NT 3.5x-based computers only.

- What currently exists: A Myuser.man file exists in the folder \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: None.

- User action: None.

MIGRATING WINDOWS NT 3.5X ROAMING PROFILE TO WINDOWS NT 4.0 ROAMING PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 3.5x roaming profile and moves to a Windows NT 4.0-based computer.

- What currently exists: A Myuser.usr file exists in the folder \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: None.

- User action: To automatically upgrade the profile, log on to the Windows NT 4.0-based computer and then log off. The automatic upgrade creates a new folder with the name Myuser.pds in the existing directory \\myserver\myshare. Inside the new folder is the upgraded User Profile for the domain user.

- For more information: See the section "Upgrading 3.5x Server-Based  Profiles to 4.0 Roaming Profiles."

MIGRATING WINDOWS NT 3.5X MANDATORY PROFILE TO WINDOWS NT 4.0 MANDATORY PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 3.5x mandatory profile and moves to a Windows NT 4.0-based computer where the user will have a mandatory profile.

- What currently exists: A Myuser.man file exists in the folder \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: Create a folder with the name Myuser.pdm in the existing folder \\myserver\myshare, and then place the desired mandatory profile into the new folder.

- User action: None.

- NOTES: Once this procedure is performed, the Windows NT 3.5x profile is  still available to the user should he or she ever log on to a Windows NT   3.5x-based computer again. The Windows NT 4.0 User Profile is maintained separately. The administrator can remove the Windows NT 3.5x profile if  the user will only be using Windows NT 4.0-based computers.

- For more information: See the section "Upgrading 3.5x Mandatory Profiles  to 4.0 Mandatory Profiles."

MIGRATING WINDOWS NT 3.5X MANDATORY PROFILE TO WINDOWS NT 4.0 ROAMING PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 3.5x mandatory profile and moves to a Windows NT 4.0-based computer where they will have a roaming profile.

- What currently exists: A Myuser.man file exists in the folder \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: Change the user's profile path to  \\myserver\myshare\myuser, and then allow the user to log on and log off.

- User action: When instructed to do so, log on to the Windows NT 4.0- based computer and then log off. This creates the folder \\myserver\myshare\myuser on the server containing the user's new roaming profile.

- For more information: See the section "Creating a New Roaming User  Profile for Windows NT 4.0."

CREATING A NEW WINDOWS NT 4.0 ROAMING PROFILE

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A new user will be logging onto Windows NT 4.0-based computers only, and will be using a roaming profile.

- What currently exists: Nothing currently exists for the user in  \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: In User Manager, specify the User Profile path without an extension. For example, use \\myserver\myshare\myuser.

- User action: Log on and then log off. This creates the folder on the server \\myserver\myshare\myuser that contains the user's new roaming profile.

- For more information: See the section "Creating a New Roaming User  Profile for Windows NT 4.0."

CREATING A NEW WINDOWS NT 4.0 MANDATORY PROFILE

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A new user will be logging onto Windows NT 4.0-based computers only, and will be using a mandatory profile.

- What currently exists: Nothing currently exists for the user in  \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: In User Manager, specify the User Profile path with the extension .man. For example, use \\myserver\myshare\myuser.man. Then manually create the myuser.man folder manually in the \\myserver\myshare directory. Places the mandatory profile for the user in this new folder.

- User action: None.

- For more information: See the section "Creating a New Mandatory User  Profile for Windows NT 4.0."

UPDATING AND CHANGING A ROAMING PROFILE TO A MANDATORY PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 4.0 roaming User Profile that was not upgraded from Windows NT 3.5x, and the administrator is going to mandate that the profile be read or logon will denied.

- What currently exists: A myuser folder containing the user's roaming profile exists in \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: Use User Manager to add the .man extension to the User Profile path, thus changing the path to  \\myserver\myshare\myuser.man. Then, rename the existing folder that contains the user's roaming profile from myuser to Myuser.man. Finally, rename the Ntuser.dat file, which is located in the root of the user's  profile folder, to Ntuser.man.

- User action: None.

- For more information: See the section "Making a Roaming Profile  Mandatory in Windows NT 4.0."

CHANGING A ROAMING PROFILE TO A MANDATORY PROFILE

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A domain user has an existing Windows NT 4.0 roaming User Profile that was upgraded from Windows NT 3.5x, and the administrator is going to mandate that the profile be read or logon will denied.

- What currently exists: A Myuser.pds folder containing the user's roaming profile exists in \\myserver\myshare.

- Administrator action: Use User Manager to change the extension of the User Profile path to .man, changing the path to  \\myserver\myshare\myuser.man. Then rename the existing folder that contains the user's roaming profile from Myuser.pds to Myuser.pdm. Finally, rename the Ntuser.dat file, which is located in the root of the user's profile folder, to Ntuser.man.

- User action: None.

- For more information: See the section "Making a Roaming Profile  Mandatory in Windows NT 4.0."

APPENDIX C - USAGE NOTES

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Important Information for Administrators Regarding User Logons and User Logoffs

- Changes that you make to server-based profiles can be lost if you do not modify the last modification date/time stamp. When a locally cached version of a profile is compared with the server-based profile, only the time/date stamp of the Ntuser.xxx file is compared. If the stamps are the same, the local copy is used. If you have made modifications to  other folders within the profile, these changes can be lost. Utilities are available to update the last modified date.

- If the Default User profile directory (including the Ntuser.xxx file) is  not available at log on, a new user who does not have a server-based Default User Profile will be unable to log on. When troubleshooting logon problems or if a user receives a message stating that the profile could not be loaded, always check for the existence of the Default User profile.

- If the locally cached copy of the User Profile is more current than the server-based profile, and if it is not mandatory, the user will be  prompted to select which profile to use.

- If the user does not successfully receive a profile when he or she logs on, the user should check to see if the profile path can be reached by  connecting to that resource with Explorer, File Manager, or Start\Run.

- Users who are members of both the Domain Users and Guests group or who are members of just the Guests group will have their local profiles deleted automatically at logoff.

Recent Updates to Profiles Since Retail Release ---

- In the original retail release of Windows NT Server 4.0, if the administrator creates a mandatory profile that ends with .man and the user is denied access to the profile, the user is still able to log on  locally, rather than being denied access. This problem was resolved in  Service Pack 3.

- Under certain conditions, sharing violations when accessing roaming or  mandatory profiles could occur. Before this problem was resolved, if  multiple users tried to log on at the exact same time, a sharing violation could result on the files making up the User Profile because Windows NT was attempting to get exclusive access to the profile. This was resolved in Service Pack 2.

- Administrators creating shortcuts on one machine for use on a central server have run into problems on user's workstations where a password prompt is displayed asking for credentials to the machine that originally created the shortcut. This is due to the default behavior of  Windows NT using the "absolute path" (the path to the original location   where the shortcut was created), to start an application even if the application is available in the specified path of the shortcut properties. In Service Pack 2, support was added to give the administrator the ability to disable this behavior and use the path specified in the shortcut properties. For more information, reference Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q158682.

Recent Updates to Policies Since Retail Release ---

The following changes have been made to System Policies support since the initial retail release of Windows NT 4.0.

- When a policy file was to be downloaded, if the validating domain controller name was 13 characters or longer, the policy would not be  applied. This has been resolved in Service Pack 3.

- NoNetConnectDisconnect, NoTrayContextMenu, NoViewContextMenu, NoFileMenu, and DisableTaskMgr were added in Service Pack 2. For more information on these, see the section, "Registry Keys Modified by the  System Policy Editor Default Templates."

- In Service Pack 2 and later, the policy file is no longer cached. This change was made to increase security. Instead of being cached, the policy file is downloaded at each logon, written to a temporary file, and applied.

- When the NoViewContextMenu policy was introduced, it did not support the tree view on the left-hand side of Explorer. This was corrected in  Service Pack 3. If this option is turned on, context menus for both the list view and the tree view are disabled.

- Manual mode policy path expansion support was added in Service Pack 3. If you specify a policy path in the registry (rather than using  Automatic mode), Windows NT now supports paths in the form of   \\someserver\share\ntconfig.pol.

- If the administrator created a new policy file and turned on synchronous logon scripts, saved it to disk, and reloaded the policy file, the policy setting would be lost because the .adm file needed modification in three different places. This was corrected in Service Pack 3.

- Changing the location of a user's Start menu caused duplicate Programs items. If you used the System Policy Editor to change the Custom Start Menu to point to a different directory (even an empty one), the user would receive the normal Programs menu item and a Programs menu item above it that pointed to the All Users programs directory. This has been corrected in Service Pack 3.

- The Microsoft Office 97 Resource Kit contains .adm files that administrators can use when configuring the Office environment for their users. This is available now from Microsoft.

APPENDIX D - RELATED KNOWLEDGE BASE ARTICLES

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The articles below can be referenced either on TechNet or by using the Microsoft Knowledge Base on Microsoft's Web site.

Profiles Q141714 How to Use %LOGONSERVER% to Distribute User Profiles Q154120 Debugging User Profiles and System Policies in Windows NT 4.0 Q156568 How to Assign the Administrator Profile to Other Users Q156697 Updating Permissions for User Profiles Q158398 Automating Network Printer Setup Q142682 How to Create and Copy Roaming User Profiles in Windows NT 4.0 Q146050 Modifying Ntuser.dat Hive So New Users Get Defined Settings Q160546 No User Profiles Were Found Q161070 Step-by-Step Roaming Profiles Configuration Q157069 Can't Access this Folder Path Is Too Long Error Q161809 How to Create Mandatory Profiles for Windows 95/98 Users in Windows NT Domain Q165398 Profiles for Members of Guests Group are Deleted Q164133 Logon Allowed When Access Denied to Mandatory User Profile Q162790 "Auto Arrange" Activates Itself in Copied User Profiles Q162717 Autodial Settings Lost When Using Roaming Profiles Q159927 Cannot Delete Certain User Profiles Q160840 Sharing Violation When Accessing User Profiles Q146192 How Windows NT Chooses Between Roaming and Local Profiles Q158899 Prompted for Password When Restoring Persistent Connections Q158682 Shortcuts Created Under Windows NT 4.0 Resolve to UNC Paths Q155587 No Administrative Tools or Common Folders Available Q157621 Personal Groups Not Visible If %Systemroot% Is Read-Only Q156695 Locating Windows NT 4.0 Profile Directories for Duplicate User Accounts Q138321 Err Msg at Logon: Unable To Log You On Because Your Profile... Policies Q151176 Policy Registry Entries (Default User) Q154120 Debugging User Profiles and System Policies in Windows NT 4.0 Q156365 Hidden Shares Are no Longer Available After Using System Policy Q156689 How to Change Print Job Priority in Windows NT 4.0 Q156699 Limitations of "Run Only Allowed Windows Application" Q162774 Policy Editor Crashes When Using Large Custom ADM Files Q162331 Internet Explorer May Not Run with System Policies Q159936 Using the Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95 System Policy Editor Q160793 Additional Desktop Restrictions Available through Registry Modification Q143164 INF: How to Protect Windows NT Desktops in Public Areas Q158398 Automating Network Printer Setup Q156698 Disabling Access to Network Resources Using System Policies Q156432 Windows NT 4.0 Policy Restriction Error at Logon Q155956 Cannot Restore Default Setting for Shutdown Button Q163215 System Policies May Not Work With Third-Party GINA DLLs

Additional query words: wpaper

Keywords: kbinfo KB185591

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