How 2 Create A User Profile In Active Directory

The first thing to do when creating roaming profiles is to create a folder on one of your servers to hold the profiles.

I will create a folder on the C: drive of my server and call it PROFILES.

The next thing to do is right click the folder and select SHARING AND SECURITY.

You will need to click the radio button next to SHARE THIS FOLDER.

You will need to click the PERMISSIONS button.

You will need to give the EVERYONE group CHANGE permissions.

NOTE: If you do not give the permission of CHANGE, then the users will receive an error every time they login to the network.

Click APPLY and OK.

Click OK on this page to close the PROFILES PROPERTIES page.

You will now need to go to ACTIVE DIRECTORY USERS AND COMPUTERS.

Go to the Organizational Unit that holds the user you want to work with.

I will select the FINANCE OU that contains a user.

Right click on the user of choice and select PROPERTIES from the list.

You will click on the PROFILE tab on the users Properties page.

You will type the server name followed by the name of the folder you created to hold the profiles and then the command %username%.

You can see I typed \\how2computer1\profiles\%username%

Once I click APPLY then the username will automatically take the place of the final command %username%.

You can see I have clicked APPLY and now the path has changed with the correct username.

I will click OK then close all windows and log off the server.

I will log in as the user cbrownie from a workstation in the domain.

I will perform this on the server in this example.

I want to verify my profile was created properly before I start making changes for all users.

You will need to go into MY COMPUTER.

Go to the C: drive and open the Profiles folder or whatever folder you created to hold the profiles.

You can now see that Cbrownie has a profile which contains information for the user.

NOTE: Once you have made it this far you can begin placing the path \\servername\foldername\%username% into every user account and the next

time they login to the system the profile will be created in the PROFILES folder.

NOTE: If your users have devices such as Palm handhelds I would recommend not using roaming profiles since it will cause the device to stop

working. If you create the Roaming profile 1^st then install the Palm handheld then this procedure usually works but not always.

I now want to create a copy of the profile I created.

I will right click MY COMPUTER and select PROPERTIES.

You will click ADVANCED and then choose SETTINGS in the USER PROFILES section.

I can see that cbrownie is a ROAMING profile.

I will highlight cbrownie and click COPY TO.

You will click the BROWSE button to find a location for the profile.

I will select the Profiles folder.

Then click OK.

You can see that the path is populated in the field. C:\PROFILES.

I will change this path to another folder by typing OTHERS to the end of the path as shown in the next image.

You can see now I have manually changed the path by typing in OTHERS to the end of the path.

I will now click the CHANGE button under PERMITTED TO USE.

You can see I have added Melissa and will click OK.

You can now see Melissa is listed as a permitted user so I will click OK.

I will click OK to close this window.

I will double click MY COMPUTER and click the C: drive.

I will click on the PROFILES folder.

I can see my new folder called OTHERS has been created so I will enter this folder.

You will see that the folder contains a complete profile.

The next option is to make this profile a mandatory profile.

This means that every user I assign to this profile will NOT be able to make any changes to their system.

I will right click the NTUSER.DAT file and click RENAME.

You can see here I have changed the extension of the file to .MAN

I will close this box.

I will now return to ACTIVE DIRECTORY USERS AND COMPUTERS.

I will now right click a user and select PROPERTIES.

I will now type in the path exactly as it is shown. \\how2computer1\profiles\others\

Then I will click APPLY and OK.

Now when Melissa logs into her computer she will already have a profile.

The difference with Melissa and other users will be that any changes she makes will be lost every time she logs off her computer.

NOTE: Roaming profiles store the contents of the preferences of the user so if they log into different machines the

users desktop and other settings move with them.

NOTE: When a user logs on using a roaming profile the profile contents is downloaded from the server to the

Users workstation.

NOTE: If the user logs on and the workstation cannot find the users roaming profile on the server then the

Workstation will use a local cached copy.

This Ends The Task

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