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by fatuncleal

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Hi, everyone:

We have a NT network with most win98 clients and about 100 new W2k clients. Users didn't have profiles setup before. We're now going to setup roaming profiles for users. The question is - would this cause any problem due to there are different OS machines ? If a user logon to 98 then go to a W2k machine or vice versa, will they still have the same profile ? what will be the best way to set this up ? ( users do not have a assigned machine )

7 replies

by benwagg

Because of the many differences between Win9x and Win2k, the profiles are not interchangeable. A Win2k profile cannot be applied to a Win98 machine.

If you plan to have "mandatory" profiles, then you could set up two, one for each client operating system. Or four, one for each OS for Managers and for Peons...

by green lantern

Should really rethink this roaming profile thing. Unless you have an overwelming need to do this then don't! You are asking for more problems then you realize. The worst is slow network response from all that new data flowing over your network. How are your dial up users going to react when they have to wait for their roaming profile to down load to their laptop? Roaming profiles can get megabytes in size without you realizing it. Even on the local LAN your log on time will be increased by the wait caused by the roaming profile being copied to the local machine.
As an example of how bad an idea this is take the desktop, if you download a 5 meg file to your desktop (which can happen without you knowing it) then that 5 megabytes has to be copied to every machine you log on to.
Also, if your machines have different video cards and resolutions setup then from machine to machine you profile might not be visible until you modify your display properties, and you won't even know this is happening without a lot of lost time troubleshooting the user's logon problem.
Oh, Win2k and Win98 profiles do not work together. Tried that, didn't work.

by gigelul

Hi,
First time when I see this question, I don't post an answer hoping that somebody will give an complete answer. But the second answer require some comments:
-I use in the last 3 years roaming profiles with no serious problems.
-Profile size can be limited with a policy (to max. 2Mb and you can exclude from profile unneeded directories). This don't decrease network performance too much. This profile will be downloaded only at logon and logoff.
-For the users with slow connections you can use local profiles and for the rest of users roaming profiles.
-About storing files on OS desktop. Bad ideea. No matter if you use roaming profiles or not. Never store files on desktop. Put only shortcuts on desktop.
-About display properties. Resolution, number of colours, etc. are not saved in profile. When a user set a resolution on a workstation, this will be default resolution for all users until other user change it.
-About different OS machines and roaming profile.
You can customise the content of the profiles and also you can use both roaming and local profiles.
In our network are only 3 Win9x clients and the rest are WinNT. Since the users generaly work on the same workstation they don't have any problems.
For my Win9x clients I use local profile.
You can have some problems with different hardware and specific applications if the users work on different workstations (fax/modems and dial-up was one of my problems but now I built a Server for communication and this problem was solved).
You can try to assign computers with the same OS for one user.

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