Windows Roaming Profile-snippet
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windows roaming profile login logout drive
Description
Introduction
When using different computers in the same lab, it can be convenient to find the same settings and documents on every computer used. For example, if someone needs to use a free service computer connected to a scanner or any specific piece of hardware (Optotrak) it can be convenient to find the same printer, shortcuts on his/her desktop, same bookmarks in his/her web browser as those found on his/her everyday workstation.
Windows provides a mechanism for this; a Roaming Profile. The roaming profile will contain amongst other things:
- Printer defined and settings
- Shortcuts and anything on your desktop
- All files used by Internet Explorer (including the cache)
- Everything in "My Documents" folder
Great, so what?
To share this profile between different computers, Windows will maintain a central copy on a server (for the cisst domain, we tend to use the shared drive P:\profile). Whenever you log in, your computer will check if your local copy is more recent than the server copy. This is performed file by file and can be extremely long if your roaming profile is large. Whenever you log out, the computer will have to update the server copy based on your local changes. Again, this can be fairly long.
Not only roaming profiles can lead to extremely long delays to log in and out (30 minutes is not unheard of) but they can also get corrupted when computers are not well synchronized (you should use nttp) or when one uses multiple computers at the same time.
Solution
So, it is important to keep your roaming profile under control. You can do it using simple rules:
- Do not store files on your desktop, specially large ones or important ones. You can create some shortcuts!
- Avoid using the "My Document" folder even if it is proposed by default by most applications
- Configure Internet Explorer to use a small cache (5Mb is fine)
To store your files locally, it is recommended to use C:\Users\<user_name> (e.g. C:\Users\anton). For files you need to backup or see from different computers, use your shared drive (usually P: on liver.compsci.jhu.edu or stomach.compsci.jhu.edu).
An alternative solution is to de-activate your roaming profile, i.e. no preferences whatsoever will be propagated between the different computers you will use. Ask your system administrator if this is what you want.
Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaming_profile
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