Remote vs local copy of roaming profile

  • Thread starter Thread starter ryanlink
  • Start date Start date
R

ryanlink

Doing some testing here... the 4 domain controllers on this site are
Win2K and most of the 180 workstations are XP Pro. Users have
complained of slow logins (3-5 minutes under load), and I just
discovered that the workstations were defaulting to Terminal Services
rather than Windows Network as first in the Provider Order.

Once I put Windows Network first in the Provider Order on a test
workstation, I logged in as a test user again, and after an initial
hang of 20 seconds or so, the Loading and Applying Personal Settings
went really fast. Then I noticed the XP Pro workstation had a locally
cached copy of the profile.

I logged out as that test user and logged back in as Administrator, and
noticed the local copy of the profile was still in Docs and Settings.
To test whether the server copy would be loaded if I logged in again, I
deleted the Favorites from the local copy of the test user profile, and
logged in as the test user again.

The Favorites were not re-loaded from the server, and in fact when I
logged out, the local profile must have been saved back up to the
server, because the Favorites were then no longer in the server copy of
the profile.

Suggestions? Users are students and faculty at a school, so are
constantly logging in from different workstations.

Cheers,

Ryan Link
Personal Technology Solutions
Home Technology Support 212-206-9619
Small Business Support 212-206-9745
www.ptsolutions.com
 
That's pretty much how roaming profiles work. You can do anything to a
roaming profile that you can do to a local profile, and the changes will be
replicated when you log off. The best way to eliminate overhead on roaming
profiles is to redirect "My Documents" to a server - it's generally the
biggest part of a profile by leaps and bounds. Then My Documents won't have
to be synched. Also, turn off "offline files".

....kurt
 
Back
Top