Thank you for all the info. One last question, Is there a reason that I need to use folder redirection in conjunction with Roaming/Mandatory profiles? Because I thought by adding the path in Active Directory the profile would be redirected to the server anyway. Is this correct?

J

Here is a link to a Microsoft KB article that will walk you through the steps involved in creating a mandatory profile in an XP environment.

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/307800

Note that once you have completed all the steps per the article, you will need to assign the path to the profile on the users properties => profile tab in AD. In a nut shell when a user logs on to an XP computer it will attempt to load the profile defined by the user’s properties but if there is a delay in the process such as a slow network, XP will then look at the local machine for an existing profile for the user. If one is present XP will load that profile instead of the mandatory profile. This may be why your user can still make changes to the desktop environment.

Also note that with a manual profile the user can still make changes to their computer environment while logged on, but these changes are not permanent and will only be available during the current session. When the user logs off the changes will be discarded.

To prevent a slow network from causing problems with mandatory or roaming profiles, select the ‘Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon’ setting in GP (Computer Configuration => Administrative Templates => System => Logon). This will prevent XP from overriding your custom profile at logon with a locally stored profile.

If you feel folder redirection is causing problems, turn that off until you get your profiles working properly. Then test redirection one folder at a time until you get the desired results.

Good luck!

I changed a test user’s profile to mandatory, but they can still delete objects off the desktop because the desktop folder is stored elsewhere using folder redirection.

Isn’t the profile alredy being redirected to the server when I put in a path such as profilestestuser? If so, does that mean I do not need to use folder redirection? All I want is for the profile to be stored on the server and not the workstation.

By entering a UNC path into a use’s profile setting, does this make it a roaming profile? Because I need to be able to log in more than one computer with the same user.

Is folder redirectiong not necessary with my setup because the entire user profile will be redirected to the server?