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ZEN 2, W2K Profiles etc..

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by chris.riley 2 views

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OK, here goes...

We have a ZEN 2, NetWare 5.1, Windows 98 environment. We have to upgrade all workstations to W2K Pro. We will also be upgrading to ZEN 3 for Desktops soon.

This is what we want to have once we upgrade to W2K Pro:

All users using the same desktop regardless of which workstation they login to. We also want only one login (Novell login) - this can be achieved by using Dynamic Local User with ZEN.

I don't want to go down the Roaming Profiles route as I've heard some horror stories!

We can use the ZEN User Policy Package to use mandatory profiles (ie. store one profile centrally on the server and get all users to use this).

But this does not seem to work with DLU (DLU creates a new profile which is what we dont want).

Basically what I'm saying is, can we get users to login to Novell (with no NT login or prompt) but still use the same Windows profile without setting up roaming profiles ?

Help needed...?!

3 replies

by jimbb

Hi Chris,

I think you can use a local NT account With DLU (Manage Exisiting Account). Then you create a user called "user" for example on each workstation (and put it in the image you'll use to deploy your new OS), and have people login as "jim"in netware and "user" locally. This will give you one profile on each PC, but it will require you to log in twice. Once as "jim", and since that user's password is not the same as "user", the client will come up with a second login. Unless everyone has the same password...

Careful though, some things are put in the profile, if people save something on the desktop it's there for everyone logging in after them,... One reusable profile is not what I'd do.

What about this, since you have ZEN anyway. Use DLU, and create a local user using NetWare credentials, and remove it as soon as the user logs out. Then you're left with the pile of profiles after a few different people used that PC. But with a simple NAL application, or a policyin a package you distribute on login anyway, you can delete anything that is not \profiles\allusers. It may require a few steps: 1-move the profiles you need to keep (allusers, administrator) to a temp dir, 2-delete everything under Profiles, 3-move the saved directories back to where they were. A batch-file can fix this, running as secure system user.

It's a bit of work, but you have one login for your users, and at the end of the day one profile on the PC. You'll have to tell your people though to save nothing on the desktop or it will vanish without recovery possibilities.

Jim

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