User Profiles Archives • Page 2 of 2 • Helge Klein

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.

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 […]

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, […]

Group Policy Preferences: Why Windows Server 2008 Will Change the Way You Work

I confess: I like group policies. They are and have always been a great way of managing computer and user settings ever since their conception and introduction with Windows 2000. Of course, at the beginning management tools were nonexistent. But we were so happy not to have to rely on NT4’s system policies any more […]

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 […]

Tag: User Profiles

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

Mandatory Profiles – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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

Group Policy Preferences: Why Windows Server 2008 Will Change the Way You Work

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