roaming profile question for win2k experts

[Mr. Burns]

We have a number of win2k pro workstations running on our network with a central server running win2k server and containing user accounts/profiles. All profiles are roaming and when a user logs on to a workstation, their profile is downloaded to a local cached copy, and any changes are uploaded to the central server during logoff (very typical setup...)

Here's my question: With many users logging on to a workstation, the size of the local cached profiles (contained under 'documents and settings/user') grows to be very big and can take up a large amount of local hard drive space. What happens if this ends up in the local hard drive getting completely full? Will win2k automatically delete/overwrite local cached profiles, or will there be an error message because there is no free disk space?
I know that I can manually go in and delete cached profiles, but this could get to be a fairly extensive exercise. I want to know what will happen if I don't delete anything manually.

 

[SaigonK]

Roaming profiles...ohhh how i love them...especially with our Novell server...NOT!

There are a few options to go with.
With Win2k it keeps all documents in their profile, so if people get all dumb and leave 80meg Powerpoint presentations on their desktop, it goes with them.
Not only will it take them awhile to logon to the workstation while it pushes the file, but they may timeout when logging out of Windows and get a sticky profile on the workstation, this might cause there roaming profile to not get updated...imagine that fiasco! (been there..done that).

1. Do your users each have a home drive on the network?
One of the easiest ways to keep profiles trimmed own is to point "My Documents" to their network drive.
This keeps them from carrying around these huge files they work on.

2. User training?
Yeah it sucks to have to babysit people about NOT saving stuff to their desktop, but it is your best bet.
If you get a stuck profile or a bad profile and they lose this profile, bye..bye files! Imagine how pissed they woul be then?
This could be a good bet.

3. Delete roaming cache.
By default windows will overwrite an existing profile on a local workstation, and by default it SHOULD erase it when they logout.
Now this is where it gets to be a pain...

It's friday afternoon, about 4:30pm or so and you have a few users who want to cut out early. They decide to logout of their pc and they have a profile that is about 30 meg in size due to them storing files in the default profile locations. It starts to crawl, and they get antsy...so they do what 99.9% of us all do...they hit the power button and call it a day.
Monday morning they come into the office, and their old profile is still on the local disk, Windows creates ANOTHER profile instead of overwriting the old one. (it usually uses the domain name extension- i.e. JDOE is on the drive so it names the new profile JDOE.DOMAIN.YADA)

Your user (John) finds that the ceo presentation he was working on and saved at about 4:15pm on Friday is NOT in his profile..he freaks..calls you and you say "It is NOT in your profile...i dont know where it might be".
Mysteriously he has a second profile on his machine, you reboot, login as admin and blow away his sticky figuring this is the prob.
Menawhile you just deleted his doc that never got sent up to the network because he was to busy leaving the building to let his pc shutown so he hit the power button.

Engouh doom and gloon for ya?

There is a registry key you can use to delete cached roaming profiles during instances like this
Do the following:

Start -- RUN -- regedit

Go to the follwoing key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Make a new DWORD value and name it DeleteRoamingCache (case sensitive)
doube click on your newly created Dword value and change the 0 to a 1.

This will force windows to delete and left over roaming profiles it finds on shutdown.


Hope this helps, if you have any other questions fire away!

 

[Fimbulvetr]

If win2k does not have enough space to store your profile, it will load the default user profile. And everytime you log on it will say, Windows was unable to load your prifle due to a lack of disk space, a default profile has been loaded instead.

Of course, if you take things oput of startup ie Wlecome to windows 2000, ICQ or anything else, it does not save the settings and everything will be the defaults everytime.