User Profiles Archives • Page 2 of 2 • Helge Klein

Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM) and the Broken Rootdrive

Terminal server application compatibility scripts have been around for a long time – so long in fact, that I considered them a legacy and stowed away any knowledge of them in a very remote area of my brain. When a Citrix customer brought up a problem with the mapping of ROOTDRIVE in the User Profile […]

Replicating User Profiles Between Sites (With or Without DFS) – Why it Should be Avoided

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Roaming user profiles seems like such a good idea at first, but it causes a myriad of problems in practice. One of these problems stems from the fact that the master copy […]

New KB Articles on User Profiles (April to May 2009)

This is a collection of new knowledge base articles related to Windows user profiles. As you can see, the last two months were pretty quiet. So quiet, that you may have missed the release of the first update to Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM). The new version comes as an MSI file that either installs […]

Folder De-Localization with Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM)

Windows user profiles prior to Vista / Server 2008 contain localized folder names. End users expect that, of course, but admins tend to hate it because automated management becomes much more difficult. How can this dilemma be resolved? End users only see the local copy of the profile, while admins mostly have to deal with […]

User Profile and Home Directory Storage: Distributing the Load Across Multiple File Servers

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. The easiest way to assign user profile and home directories is via group policy. But that can only be done per computer. There is no (simple) way to point different users’ directories […]

Microsoft Tackles the "Last Writer Wins" Problem of Roaming Profiles in Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2

Among the more annoying deficiencies of roaming user profiles in terminal server farms is what came to be known as “last writer wins”. It looks like Microsoft is trying to address the issue in the upcoming next version of its operating systems. Although this is a step in the right direction, I have doubts about […]

New Articles on User Profiles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (March 2009)

This is a collection of new MS KB articles related to Windows user profiles.

Citrix User Profile Manager: How Registry Exclusion Lists Can Mess Up Group Policy Processing

The documentation of Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM, for short) recommends excluding the following registry keys from processing: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies The net effect of this is that the Citrix profiles managed by UPM do not contain any policy settings. The reasoning behind this being: Policies are reapplied anyway during the next logon, so there is […]

Mandatory Profiles – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. A mandatory profile is a special type of roaming profile. As with a roaming profile, a mandatory profile is copied from its network location to the local machine during logon. But during […]

Citrix User Profile Manager: User Store Design Recommendations

Citrix User Profile Manager, co-developed by sepago and Citrix, has been released. This is the first in a loose series of articles about UPM I intend to write. I will start by giving recommendations on how to set up the central profile storage called “user store”. Notes on the release: UPM is available on “My […]

User Profile Design: A Primer

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. This article tries list the dos and don’ts that need to be considered when creating a user profile design. It focuses on functionality built into Windows. Third-party solutions that replace or complement […]

Enter ProfileNurse – Your Skilled Profile Care Professional

User profiles can be bitchy. A single misbehaving profile is bad enough, but what if you have hundreds or thousands of them? Most admins have a boatload of profiles strewn across file servers, and no way of knowing anything about them because they are lacking the management tools. That’s where ProfileNurse comes in, a free […]

Deleting User Profiles – Correctly

Commenter Steven asked in response to my article on how not to delete local user profiles for the correct way to script the deletion of user profiles. Here is how.

How to Reduce the Size of Roaming Profiles

This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. Roaming user profiles tend to grow over time, which is sometimes referred to as profile bloat. In and by itself, profile growth is not a problem. Users of desktop PCs who log […]

Troubleshooting User Profile Problems on Vista and Server 2008 – But How?

User profile problems are among the most common support issues. It is only appropriate that Microsoft simplified the troubleshooting process over time – but forgot to port it over to Vista.

Deleting a Local User Profile – Not as easy as one Might Assume

In many environments it is a common practice to delete user profiles prior to conducting tests in order to start with a clean slate. However, this may prove more difficult than anticipated. Most people think that a local user profile only consists of the directory %USERPROFILE% typically located below C:\Users on Vista and Server 2008 […]

Corrupt User Profiles – Do They Even Exist?

I will make a bold statement here: corrupt user profiles are a myth. That may seem very bold indeed, with 331,000 hits on Google for “corrupt user profile” and countless admins complaining about having to deal with corrupt profiles on a daily basis.

Another IT Legend

Some time ago I wrote about a misconception so common that it might pass as an IT legend – the confusion of HKU\.Default with the default user’s registry hive. Recently I came across another interesting misapprehension. As you know, the profiles base directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings) contains not only one special sub-folder, Default User, […]

Why is (Almost) Everybody Wrong About HKU\.Default?

Most technical folks have stumbled across the registry hive HKEY_USERS\.Default at some point. Many of them think they know what it is used for. Interestingly, most who do are wrong. The misconception about what HKU\.Default is used for dates back to the good old days when Windows NT 4.0 was still considered “new technology”. This […]

Category: User Profiles

Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM) and the Broken Rootdrive

Replicating User Profiles Between Sites (With or Without DFS) – Why it Should be Avoided

New KB Articles on User Profiles (April to May 2009)

Folder De-Localization with Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM)

User Profile and Home Directory Storage: Distributing the Load Across Multiple File Servers

Microsoft Tackles the "Last Writer Wins" Problem of Roaming Profiles in Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2

New Articles on User Profiles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (March 2009)

Citrix User Profile Manager: How Registry Exclusion Lists Can Mess Up Group Policy Processing

Mandatory Profiles – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Citrix User Profile Manager: User Store Design Recommendations

User Profile Design: A Primer

Enter ProfileNurse – Your Skilled Profile Care Professional

Deleting User Profiles – Correctly

How to Reduce the Size of Roaming Profiles

Troubleshooting User Profile Problems on Vista and Server 2008 – But How?

Deleting a Local User Profile – Not as easy as one Might Assume

Corrupt User Profiles – Do They Even Exist?

Another IT Legend

Why is (Almost) Everybody Wrong About HKU\.Default?