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removing roaming profiles

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by ladcas

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Hi,
Does anyone know of a way of removing ex-employees roaming profiles from the various machines they may have sat at ? Most of our staff have no specific desk, so sit wherever they can. This obviously results in their profile being scattered around. When someone leaves, is there a way of doing it as a batch job rather than from one machine at a time. I cant be the only person for whom this would make life easier !

3 replies

by beermonster

Hi,
As you don't mention your environment the best option may not be available to you, but with servers and clients at win2k or above (and within a domain structure) your best option is to use the gpo setting - computer config \ admin templates \ system\ user profiles \ 'delete cached copies of roaming profiles'.

if you have to script this, check out the Microsoft delprof utility -

http://tinyurl.com/2b8gp

This should do everything you need. The version the above link takes you to is for win2k and above, but I'm sure there is an NT4 version out there as well. Hope this helps......

by ladcas

many thanks. The delprof utility is certainly a bonus I was unaware of. Although it will, as far as I can see, only remove the profile/s from one machine at a time, it does work.
Again, using the GPO route, only appears to do it at the machine the user last logs on/off from.
Anyone aware of a way to remove an old profile from all workstations ?

by andy_boucher

There is this utility, called PC Profile Manager, you can find it at the link below:

http://www.helmtechnologies.com/wpm/usa_home.htm

It will list all computers, users and user profiles on all machines in your environment, the last time computers and users logged into AD, and also the last time a profile was accessed on a computer. You can then see all your profiles, which are valid, aged, etc. and sort by them. In addition, if you delete a user, because that person is no longer with the company, you can have it delete that users profile from all machines they logged in to. In addition, you can backup and restore profiles. For less the $1800 for your entire domain, it is really inexpensive for all that you get with it... Check it out, they have a demo/trialware you can download. It definitely makes things better knowing what you are deleting then delprof with is indescriminate.

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