Laptop configuration via GPO

6 Mar 2006 5:20 PM

Gordon Price

I have a laptop that is going to the owner of the company, and he wants some
very specific functionality.

* Roaming Profile, so that the profile settings are backed up to tape.
* Redirected Desktop & My Documents, for the same reason.
* Offlined Desktop & My Documents, so they are available when disconnected.
* Ability to log on while disconnected, any number of times, with no error
messages

That last part is what is giving me the most grief. Right now I can log on
while disconnected, using cached credentials, but I get an error when logging
back off, because the profile can't be pushed back to the server.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to make this work? And I would love to find
a resource on Windows laptop configuration in general. All the Group Policy
books I have looked at tell you about the settings, but not best practice for
specific situations. And I am pretty desperate, as he wants his laptop last
week! ;)

Thanks,
Gordon

7 Mar 2006 11:43 AM

Neil Ruston

IMO, roaming profiles and offline logons are mutually exclusive. A roaming
profile is written to at logoff, so if you're not connected to the network at
logoff, then this write will fail.

Why do profiles need to roam? Why do they need to be backed up? What is
stored in the profile that is important and that must roam with the user?

neil

Show quoteHide quote

"Gordon Price" wrote:

> I have a laptop that is going to the owner of the company, and he wants some
> very specific functionality.
>
> * Roaming Profile, so that the profile settings are backed up to tape.
> * Redirected Desktop & My Documents, for the same reason.
> * Offlined Desktop & My Documents, so they are available when disconnected.
> * Ability to log on while disconnected, any number of times, with no error
> messages
>
> That last part is what is giving me the most grief. Right now I can log on
> while disconnected, using cached credentials, but I get an error when logging
> back off, because the profile can't be pushed back to the server.
>
> Anyone have a suggestion on how to make this work? And I would love to find
> a resource on Windows laptop configuration in general. All the Group Policy
> books I have looked at tell you about the settings, but not best practice for
> specific situations. And I am pretty desperate, as he wants his laptop last
> week! ;)
>
> Thanks,
> Gordon

9 Mar 2006 1:23 AM

Gordon Price

"Neil Ruston" wrote:

> IMO, roaming profiles and offline logons are mutually exclusive. A roaming
> profile is written to at logoff, so if you're not connected to the network at
> logoff, then this write will fail.
>
> Why do profiles need to roam? Why do they need to be backed up? What is
> stored in the profile that is important and that must roam with the user?
>
> neil

Everyone has gotten used to having all their settings there when they jump
on a different machine, as well as getting everything back when we give them
a new machine. My hope was to continue to do this, but if it can't be done I
am willing to say laptop users gain portability, and loose multiple machine
ability. Seems like a fair tradeoffs. Now if I could only lock a particular
user out of every machine but their own, without breaking OWA. Of course I
have not tried that since doing SP installs on both the server and exchange,
so maybe it works now. Gotta try.
Anyway, time to create a GPO to make my laptop users non roaming.

Thanks,
Gordon

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