Is it possible to have some sort of profile stored on a server so that whichever pc i log into on the network i will have all my e-mail settings and desktop icons etc. I only have a workgroup at the moment so im assuming that I will need a domain first?

 

djuk,

yep, you can setup roaming profiles for your users, pretty easy really, outlook data, my docs etc will "Roam" from desktop to desktop, try and map private drives to network shares for each user account to keep the profile sizer small, then move the target for my docs to look at the network drive or folder.

Pretty sure you gonna need to create a domain, has many advantages for shares,permissions,management & security etc..

Before you promote your server to a domain controller have a read up & understand the basics of the following:

active directory (objects, users & groups)
DNS
NTFS (required for Active directory to install)


When designing a domain structure think carefully, as It's all too easy to get carried away & end up with a pile of Poo!

Good resources for info, spend some time here:

http://www.technet.com

Should answer loads of Q's..


If you need any help email as per my profile

Cheers

Tim

 

Thanks for that Tim, got it working just nicely

Only snag is that one of our laptops is using windows xp home, which doesnt appear to support this. Do you know of any way to add this functionality to xp home?

Thanks

David

 

AFAIK, you can't with Home Edition.

If you want roaming profiles on the laptop, I think you'll need to upgrade to XP Pro.

Stefan

 

Yeah, you will need Pro in order to join the workstation to a domain.

Also, think about setting a quota for profiles because if a user starts storing a lot of data on his desktop, saving large email personal folders etc then this data will follow him around wherever he logs on.

a) It will use up hard disk space on every workstation they use (and it is left there indefinately by default)

b) When he logs into a workstation he has never used before he will be sat there waiting ages to log on as his profile is downloaded onto the workstation!

Incidentally the largest profile I have seen was about 1.5 gigs! The user in question tried logging into a workstation that wasn't his usual computer. As his enormous bloated profile was loaded onto the workstation it ran out of disk space and corrupted his profile. He then logged out and it saved that corrupted profile back to the server. Then when he tried his normal workstation the corrupted profile was seen to be newer and was loaded over the only remaining non broken profile on his usual workstation.... not good. (This was NT by the way - I have never dared to try and see if the same thing happens with XP!)

So if you enable roaming profiles I recommend you set a quota for them in the domain policy!

 

Djuk,

As he other guys have said, only the pro versions of Xp & 2K support domain membership, home/me/98 etc only for workgroups I'm afraid!.


Time for an upgrade to XP Pro, much better network viable OS, works well in 2000/2003 server environment.

Good luck