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Office 2003 and Mandatory Profiles

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7 replies

by sduthie

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I have lab computers running Windows XP SP2 and Office 2003 in a Domain. Our students use mandatory profiles when they log in to a computer. The issue I have is that each time a student logs in and launches Office 2003, Office set up runs as if it were a new user. I launch Office, and all other applications, when I am building the mandatory profile. Does anyone know of any way to set this up so that Office does not run its mini-installer each time the student logs in? Thanks for any help coming my way.

7 replies

by snarkhunter

Are you creating one mandatory profile and then copying it to create each of your students' profiles? If this is the case the the user name inside the profile will be wrong and hence the mini-setup will run. As the profile is mandatory the changes resulting from the mini-setup cannot be saved, and therefore the setup runs each time.

The solution would be to log each new user account on once as a roaming profile and to open an Office application. Once the mini-setup has run, log out and THEN make the profile mandatory.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

by sduthie

Unfortunately, that won't work for us. I have over 400 students and we have one mandatory profile for each classroom. I will keep it in mind for other uses though. Thanks for your input.

by snarkhunter

400 users would obviously keep you busy! Just one other suggestion - can you not achieve most of the restrictions through group policy? This can be used to prevent most settings changes. You could either protect the desktop/start menu with some judicious file permission changes (e.g. to prevent the addition/deletion of icons) or write a logon script to clear all the icons and re-create just the correct ones.

The only problem I can see is that this would work by blocking your studends from doing things while the mandatory profile allows them to take actions but reverses them at logoff.

by sduthie

We use the mandatory profile to control student access to applications and utilities. There are also many group policy settings to restrict access. The combination of both seems to work best for us.

by gmxer

I am responsible for that same type of setup for a high school with 2500 students. Here is the process I have come up with: Setup a new general profile like "Student User" > Log in > Start Office 2003 > Enter the name "Student User" to finish the initial Office setup > Configure Office 2003 in the way most users will want it setup (toolbars configured, help pane not displayed at start up, etc.) > Close Office > Start > Run > Regedit > locate the HKEY User segment for Office and export > Save the .REG file somewhere you will recall. At this point there are different ways to merge that file for users. Write a VBscript to merge or load a .BAT at login for any user in the local policy. Not a problem since you said you're using a domain.

This has worked very well across our labs. If the math lab wants the equation editor in Word, then I change the .REG file and just for the math lab and leave the others as they are.

Of course, I build this into each custom image I create before deploying. This can be done in Windows 2000, but we have to use Wscript and time the focus of the buttons through the login process. Windows XP accepts reg changes smoothly.

Hope that can help...

by gilbert.cruz

When you create the profile you should run the Office applications and then save this profile in the share folder.

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