Hi folks!

At my work, I'm trying to provide desktop technicians a cleaner way to build and configure workstations for new users. We have a generic Windows XP image (made with Sysprep and Ghost) with a default user profile that configures the base of a user account profile. However, technicians must do finer configurations directly in the user's profile. For the moment, all solutions I have found on the Net requires that the user logs on once on the machine in order to create the domain associations and profile directory structure. For simplicity, the technician then configure the user profile by asking the user's password, which is a major security breach. I would like to find a way which technicians could either create and log on to the user's profile without needing to use the user's domain credential, or to create a template profile specific for the user and then link it with the user's domain account without needing the user to log in at first. The goal is to let the technician prepare the user's profile so the first time the user logs in using his domain credentials, the profile is configured and ready to use, and no further work is needed from the technician. I don't have access to SMS or other workstation management products, and the profile configuration must be done manually. I imagine it's technically possible to do something like that, and I can't believe I'm the only one who ever wanted to do that. Has any of you have an experience with this?

 Thanks a lot!

 

Vincent

I use VBScripts as part of the logon to do everything from setting up Outlook, multiple Printers, Desktop Shortcuts, and various other settings in the Registry.  If you have some specific things you need to do during a logon you can list them & I can paste some VBScripts to go with it?

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Ryan Patel
Sr. Network Engineer|BS|MCSE|CCNA

I can also provide some VB code to help you out, Vincent.

I have a question for you, Ryan.  I’ve been looking for VB code to automatically share everyone’s calendar in Outlook 2007 when they login.  I would like to do this with a security group, such as “Outlook Calendar Share”.  That group would contain all our full time employees.  Is that something you do with your VB script or know of any sites that describes how to set this up?

Thanks,

Dan

Dan,

That is an interesting request, but I do not know how to do this.  I'm in the Healthcare sector so we can not do something like this due to HIPAA regulations.  Have you looked into setting up Public Folders and doing it through there?  That is how we do everything, and we even direct certain emails to various folders because you can make them Mail-Enabled.

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Ryan Patel
Sr. Network Engineer|BS|MCSE|CCNA

Thanks for the advice, Ryan! Unfortunately, I don't want to enforce a specific normalized profile, but let technicians configure the desktop manually following the user's preferences. The clientele is VIP and executive. When we were under Novell, technicians were able to "impersonate" a local user and log in on his behalf. Under AD, the only way to do that is by asking the password to the user (security breach) or resetting the password (not very funny for the user). All solutions provided by Microsoft imply that the user first logs on using his credentials, but I can't imagine it's impossible to configure the profile under another user and then copy it (using USMT or another tool) so the user logs in to this profile instead of creating a new one. That is, it would be much better if the user don't need to log in before the machine is completely configured, and that's something USMT can't do.

Try creating a profile of User A and login as User B to copy User A over your VIP Clientele.  You can do it from Properties of My Computer or from explorer.  From explorer, be sure to Show Hidden Files & System Files before doing the Copy.  Not sure if this will work perfectly, but you can give it a shot.

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Ryan Patel
Sr. Network Engineer|BS|MCSE|CCNA

Ryan

Can you post some examples of you scripts?  I have been looking for some to setup the profiles when they login. 

I have the printers and Mapped drives down. We use one VB Master Script that I created that maps according to their location in an OU or member of groups.  I was prode because we have over 80,000 users and I was able to make 99.9% happy with it (0.1 percent didn't like it because they can edit it BABIES!!!!!!).  If anyone is interested in it I'll be more then happy to share.

 KID

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The fluffy midgets in my head tell me to format everything and hope the end user knows how to backup their data.

I've got 100s of VB scripts on my PC.  Can you be more specific as to what you are looking for and I can see if I have it?

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Ryan Patel
Sr. Network Engineer|BS|MCSE|CCNA