Roaming profiles for laptops with multiple users.

[martin]

I'm about to deploy a small group of laptops which logon to a windows domain.
On the desktop computers we already have roaming profiles and folder
redirection to make sure that both "my documents" and the home directory is
not a part of the profile. Home directory is simply mapped to the letter H.
This works quite well. Our desktops run windows xp.

The problem is how to do this correctly for the laptops. Those will be used
both internally and externally. I could probably go the simple route here,
and just continue having roaming profiles, and let the profile be cached once
the laptop is outside our network.

The big issue is, as I see it, is that the laptops will be shared by several
users. Here I think the folder redirection can quickly become a headache. We
are thinking about using offline folders to synchronize and cache contents of
"my documents", but this is not a per-user setting. I think this means
trouble once another user logs on with access denied messages to the mapped
drive and so on.

I'm quite not sure if offline folders are usable at all in this setting. I
just want to make it simple for our users to have documents available on the
road. Quite possibly I'll have to look for a different solution.

Right now are the laptops pre-installed with windows vista business edt. I'm
not sure if vista is better in such a setting and I am a little concerned to
introduce another os which might complicate things since our users will get
roaming profiles for both operating systems?

 

[Anthony [MVP]]

Re: Roaming profiles for laptops with multiple users.

I agree its a problem with multiple users on XP. It works OK if you assume a
laptop has only one owner.
You might take a look at the Vista Sync Center. It has a better way to
handle this.
If that doesn't suit you, a different way to do this is to not use roaming,
and rely on a client backup when on the network.
Anthony,
http://www.airdesk.com


"martin" <martin@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:AE5C180E-0BF4-4BD2-9AFA-5F2089D5B77C@microsoft.com...
> I'm about to deploy a small group of laptops which logon to a windows
> domain.
> On the desktop computers we already have roaming profiles and folder
> redirection to make sure that both "my documents" and the home directory
> is
> not a part of the profile. Home directory is simply mapped to the letter
> H.
> This works quite well. Our desktops run windows xp.
>
> The problem is how to do this correctly for the laptops. Those will be
> used
> both internally and externally. I could probably go the simple route
> here,
> and just continue having roaming profiles, and let the profile be cached
> once
> the laptop is outside our network.
>
> The big issue is, as I see it, is that the laptops will be shared by
> several
> users. Here I think the folder redirection can quickly become a headache.
> We
> are thinking about using offline folders to synchronize and cache contents
> of
> "my documents", but this is not a per-user setting. I think this means
> trouble once another user logs on with access denied messages to the
> mapped
> drive and so on.
>
> I'm quite not sure if offline folders are usable at all in this setting. I
> just want to make it simple for our users to have documents available on
> the
> road. Quite possibly I'll have to look for a different solution.
>
> Right now are the laptops pre-installed with windows vista business edt.
> I'm
> not sure if vista is better in such a setting and I am a little concerned
> to
> introduce another os which might complicate things since our users will
> get
> roaming profiles for both operating systems?