First, I want to comment... I purchased the Group Policy book a couple of years ago and it's one of the few that I have right on my desk. What an awesome resource.

Ok, now my issue...

I'm in a school system that has around 5,000 computers and 18,000 students. A couple of years ago I started roaming profiles to get around a mapping issue. It seems that the only way to map directly into a user's home directory is to turn on roaming or madatory profiles. We are 100% XP sp2.

Issues:
1) We have around 12 different types of hardware
2) There is different software loaded on different computers. Some software we have licenses for only a certain bunch of computers. To make matters worse, a lot of this software is old and doesn't have the ability to install to "all users".
3) Once a user logs on, they get the desktop for the computer they logged into. From there out, they will not get icons/programs on all other computers; its just what they have on that computer.

I have roaming profiles turned on right now. What ever computer they log in to, they get their profile.

Recently, the hardware has become an issue where students are getting the hardware configuration from the initial computer they log into. For instance, the sound card and configuration is different from computer to computer. If they log into a computer that has a different hardware configuration, the sound card will not work right.

Question:
Is there a way to limit what is being put into the roaming profile? For example, I want the profile to pick up what is on the workstation as far as hardware and configuration goes. I also want the students to pick up whatever icons are on the desktop they logged into.

I'm also starting to look at mandatory profiles to prevent students from making permanent changes to their desktop. So this will need to be taken into consideration as well.