[THIN] Re: How to selectively disable the contents of the "All users" profile folder?

Hi Angus,

A while ago we did an upgrade from NT 4.0 TSE/Metaframe Xp FR1 to
WIndows Server 2003/Metaframe XP FR3.

We just defined the profile location as \\server\profiles\%username%\%osv%

The OSV environment variable was defined on each "type"  of server, in
this case NT4 and W2K3 respectively. That kept the 2 sets of profiles
separated and we used the office profile wizard to copy application
only information between the 2 sets of profiles. Had a script to
translate the NT 4 printer shares to 2003 printer shares (same
sharename, different server) and things worked just fine, transparent
to the version of the O.S.

This was before we started using flex profiles, which in retrospect
would have been a lot better.

We've been running one 2003 site now for nearly 17 months and back-end
tuning and corrupt profile issues aside 2003 has been pretty good.
However if I had a chance to do it again we could have saved ourselves
heaps of grief by using flex profiles.

It's easy enough to turn off the All Users program files area by
enabling the group policy rule under User configuration >
administrative templates > Start Menu and taskbar, "Remove common
program groups from Start Menu".

The IE shortcut on the desktop can be controlled by group policy, and
the group policy snippet (Machine) below will stop recreation of the
outlook express icon:

-----
    POLICY "Disable Outlook Express Icon Creation"
    KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed
Components\{44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C}"
        PART "Stop creation of Outlook Express shortcut" CHECKBOX
        VALUENAME "StubPath"
            VALUEON ""
            VALUEOFF ""
        END PART
    END POLICY ; Disable Outlook Express Icon Creation (regardless !!!)
-----

Matter of fact extending this for all the other stubpath entries
wouldn't be all that hard.

regards,

Rick

Ulrich Mack 
Volante Systems 


On 4/28/05, Angus Macdonald <Angus.Macdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm just in the process of setting up my first W2K3 / MPS3 server. Our main
> app seems very sensitive to user profile corruption so I'm setting the new
> farm up in a semi-mandatory profile arrangement. Because we already have an
> existing 1.8 farm and I don't want to screw around with existing profiles
> I'm using the W2K3 ability to specify TS profiles on a per-server basis,
> which doesn't work properly with mandatory profiles, sadly. Instead, I've
> setup the per-server profile to point to an empty folder, which forces
> everybody to use the "Default User" profile on the server. At logoff, I use
> Kix to manually change the profile type in the registry to mandatory, so it
> isn't unloaded to the fileserver. This gives me a reasonable facsimile of
> mandatory profiles without interfering with my existing farm.
> 
> However, the shortcuts in the "All users" profile are also loaded at
> startup, adding lots of unwanted icons to users redirected start menus. I
> don't want to just clear the folder out because administrators need access
> to all the shortcuts. Is it possible to tell W2K3 not to use the "All users"
> settings?
> 
> Also, my users redirected folders keep growing shortcuts for Outlook
> Express, IE and others. I don't want these so can that "useful" function be
> disabled as well?
>
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