Assign a single profile to a group of users
Hello, I'm re-posting this question because Arthur Xie decided to mark his smart a** comment as the answer to the post when my question has obviously not been answered... In Windows 7 is it possible to assign a single local profile to a group of users? My research on this topic keeps bringing me to roaming profiles. I/we do not wish to use roaming profiles. I did find one product that claims to be able to do this: User Profile Manager by ForensiT (http://www.forensit.com/desktop-management.html), but that software is quite expensive for our entire enterprise... I'd like to tell Windows, anybody in the group "Domain Users" use local profile "Installer"... Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Justin
February 5th, 2010 6:42pm

Hi,Please go to link below for info on How to customize default user profile in Win 7http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973289/en-usPlease bear in mind, that my answer is based on the details given in your post. The more I get the better the answer, Slan go foill, Paul
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February 5th, 2010 7:19pm

Hi artiste1, I have seen this KB article, however using sysprep to populate (or re-populate) the Default User profile everytime a new application is installed or setting changed is unacceptable in our environment. The "How to turn the default user profile into a mandatory user profile in Windows 7" section of this KB article talks about setting up the mandatory profile on a network share... It also says you copy the local "Default User" profile to the network share location... So how do you edit that profile so that the edits are applied to all users that login to that workstation? and in our environment, a technical college, we would need one of these Mandatory Profiles for every machine (2000+), or at the very least for every lab as their is different software and configurations in each lab... All I want to do is tell Windows 7 to use an already existing local profile (Installer), which would be setup the way we want it before imaging the lab, for every user that logs into the machine... Is this possible? ForensiT's "User Profile Manager" product claims it can... So it would seem to me that it's possible somehow... even without that software... Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks, Justin
February 5th, 2010 7:26pm

Hi Justin, I used to work at a college and we had a similar need. Our solution was a single user account per lab and assigning it a mandatory profile, the students all used that account in the lab. If you need to make a change for everyone in that lab you only have to update the mandatory profile for the lab account.
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February 6th, 2010 1:09am

Hi Jake, and thanks for your response... The problem with using a Mandatory profile for each lab is we would probably need several mandatory profiles for each lab (at least 2 as the teacher station PC always has special software)... Some labs have three copies of application A on 3 of the 20 machines and 6 copies of application B on a different 6 of the 20 machines... etc. etc... Requiring many mandatory profiles for that lab... I'm thinking Mandatory Profiles just are not going to work, unless I can use a mandatory profile for every PC that is located on the local drive... Back in Novell days their was an option to login to a specific local profile once authenticated via LDAP... Is their any option like this in Windows 7? Thanks, Justin
February 9th, 2010 1:25am

Hmm.. that is a tough one. I'm not aware of anything built in that will accomplish that, it would likely have to be something 3rd party. Best of luck.
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February 23rd, 2010 1:23am

Hi Justin, I work in a school, i have the same profile problem. I try to find a solution, i try the software forensit profile manager. It work great but very expensive for 400 computer. Did you find a solution (other then forensit) that make same job? Help me !!! Thanks
February 11th, 2011 9:19pm

Hello, We are currently using the following batch script to update the default user folder in Windows 7... This is NOT a Microsoft supported method and I'm pretty sure it breaks Win7 profile things, but nothing that has caused a show stopper for us... Yet... @echo off REM 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 REM SCRIPT NAME: Update Default User Profile.cmd REM VERSION: 2.0 REM DISCRIPTION: Copies profile to the default user profile in Windows 7. REM Must right click script and run as administrator! REM AUTHOR: Justin REM DATE: 10/1/2010 REM 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 attrib -h "C:\Users\Default" if exist "C:\Users\Default_Backup" rmdir /s /q "C:\Users\Default_Backup" ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 -w 1000 > nul if exist "C:\Users\Default_Backup" echo ERROR - Removal of old Backup Folder Failed! && goto end rename "C:\Users\Default" "Default_Backup" if not exist "C:\Users\Default_Backup" echo ERROR - Backup Failed! && goto end echo. echo Existing Default Profile Successfully Backed Up echo. ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6 -w 1000 > nul md "C:\Users\Default" xcopy "C:\Users\Installer\*.*" "C:\Users\Default" /e /c /h /k goto end :complete echo. echo Script Completed . . . echo. pause goto endnow :end echo. echo Script Terminated With Errors . . . echo. pause :endnow exit Note my script copies the C:\Users\Installer\ profile to the C:\Users\Default\ folder... You'll need to update the "xcopy" line of the script to match whatever profile you need to copy to Default... Also, you need to right click this script and Run as Administrator, or it will not work! On another note, we have now budgeted for the Forensit tool, but because of the cost are still looking into other options... If we come up with something better, I'll post it here... Justin
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April 4th, 2011 12:28pm

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