Advice on setting up user profiles

[insurin]

Hi Scott, I been away.

I work at edge hill, its in England.

I am still looking at this printer problem. Good contribution from others. I am going to have a look at it all now.

If anyone could give me advice on which method to use for user profiles, that would be great

Obviously with it being a college, I have hundreds of users and I am not sure which method to use for user profiles. Should I be using default user profile for everyone that logs on and if so should this profile be stored in the netlogon folder on the network or the one from the local machine that has been tailored. Or should I be using roaming profiles. The only thing stopping me using roaming profiles is the thought of all the network storage space I will need for each and every user's profile and the effect on network performance with each and every users profiles being uploaded/downloaded upon every logon/logoff.

As it stands at the monent I have created a default user profile on t he local machine and setup the start menu etc how I want it for all the students when they logon. I am having some teething problems with it so thats why I posted the question

<edit: split from a post about printers so that the replies to each part of the problem would be more useful. AdamV>

[graycat]

you could always use a logon script but assign it to via the computer settings. that way, you'll be able to assign printers to certain PCs regardless of who logs on to them without them becoming local printers.

there's a "logon script creator" out there that will quite happily walk you through creating scripts that check group membership before mapping printers / drives. If i can find the website, I'll post it.

Tim/.

[AdamV]

The problem with configuring up the default profile is that users who already loggedon once and have a profile will simply ignore it.

Where possible, use the "All Users" start menu / desktop to deliver standard items you need all users to have access to.

Roaming can get big, but you can exclude some stuff from it (in addition to the stuff which is already excluded like local application data > Temporary internet files etc). Redirection might be an even better way of achieving this if you have a reasonably fast network.