Introduction to Desktop Management
Introduction to Desktop Management |
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You generally do not need to do any management of profiles. You need to perform administrative tasks only when you use mandatory profiles or roaming user profiles.
Table 21.5 compares user profile tasks between Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0.
Table 21.5 Common User Profile Tasks
| Task | Windows NT 4.0 Tool | Windows 2000 Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Add a path to a user profile | User Manager command on the Administrative Tools menu | Group Policy accessed through Active Directory Users and Computers, and then under User Configuration |
| View the contents of a user profile (using default installation on a new computer) | Profiles in Winnt, user | Windows Explorer profile stored in Documents and Settings, User |
| Copy a user profile | System in Control Panel | System properties, and then under User Profiles |
| Add a home directory to a path | User Manager command on the Administrative Tools menu | Group Policy accessed through Active Directory Users and Computers, and then under User Configuration |
| Add a logon script to a user profile | User Manager command on the Administrative Tools menu | Group Policy accessed through Active Directory Users and Computers and then under Windows settings and scripts |
In your organization, you might be presented with many types of users and user configurations. For more information about identifying the various types of users and how best to use the different parts of IntelliMirror, see "Applying Change and Configuration Management" in the Deployment Planning Guide.
IntelliMirror can work with various user profiles. You can present users with various user and computer configurations, depending on their individual needs, and how the corporate network is established to support those needs. A user might be working as a roaming user or a mobile user — on a computer where he or she is the only user and has free control of the local system, or on a computer in a tightly managed system where you control the desktop configuration.
It is recommended that you use Group Policy to customize your user profiles rather than mandatory user profiles. If you choose to use mandatory profiles, it is important to know the various hardware configurations for each user; if these configurations are available, create and modify the user profile settings on a computer with the same hardware configuration. For example, a user profile determines screen placement and size of windows. Because user profiles can be accessed on various types of client computers and because these computers might have different hardware configurations (for example, having different video cards and monitors), a user profile might not look correct if the type of display is not set properly. If you are creating a mandatory user profile for several users, create a single user profile for the whole group of users only if all the users use computers that have the same type of video hardware.
For more information about how to establish Windows 2000 user profiles and the settings saved in a user profile, see Windows 2000 Server Help.
The following section describes some of the base settings that need to be established for roaming and mobile users.