User Profiles

On computers running Windows NT Workstation or Windows NT Server, user profiles automatically create and maintain the desktop settings for each user's work environment on the local computer. A user profile is created for each user when the user logs on to a computer for the first time.

User profiles provide several advantages to users:

• When users log on to their workstations, they receive the desktop settings as they existed when they logged off.

• Several users can use the same computer, and each receives a customized desktop when they log on.

If you have a computer running Windows NT Server on your network, user profiles can be stored on a server so that user profiles can follow users to any computer running the Windows NT version 4.0 platform on the network. These are called roaming user profiles. You can also assign mandatory user profiles to prevent users from changing any desktop settings.

For more information about roaming user profiles and mandatory user profiles, see Chapter 3, "Managing User Work Environments" in Windows NT Server version 4.0 Concepts and Planning.