Win95 user profiles: network?

James Klock j-klock at evanston.lib.il.us
Tue Mar 17 18:48:50 EST 1998


I'm trying to set up a new Windows NT 4 server, and would like to set it up
so that windows95 workstations authenticate within the domain, and then use
the user profile (desktop icons, start menu, etc) resident on the server.
In other words, user WEBPAC would get the same screen, regardless of which
particular win95 machine that user sat down at.  

Windows NT 4 seems to be fairly happy with this concept, and even has a
buzzword for it ("roaming accounts", they call it.)  But I'm not certain
how to convince the Win95 machines to get their user profile info from the
server.  The Win95 Policy Editor looks like it will happily hack the
registry for me, to redirect the individual bits that make up the user
profile for "Current User", asking only that I specify the directory to
pull them from.  Can I just use the standard network designation (ie
\\SERVER\PATHTOPROFILES\%username%\Desktop\ where PATHTOPROFILES would be
the share name of the directory in which the profiles are kept (by default,
if I'm using the same profiles for remote server access as I would for
local server access, %SYSTEMROOT%\profiles\)?

I've also come across the USERPROF.INF file, which looks like it might do
some or all of this for me.  

Does anyone have advice on how to get Windows95 and NT 4.0 to do what I want?

Thanks for the help!

James


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