Workshop

Microsoft Profiles
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Windows 95 and NT have the capability to store user-specific information on the network, rather than
storing it on the local hard drive (although the hard drive has a copy of the information, too). This
information consists of the following items:
• The Start menu (shortcuts)
• The desktop (shortcuts)
• Recently used files (shortcuts)
• The User Registry (a roaming version of the Registry with user-specific settings)
Profiles are a wonderful standardization tool, as well as a good network troubleshooting tool. Because
the user settings are easily separated from the user’s workstation, having the user try something at
another workstation is easy and painless—you sometimes don’t even have to reinstall applications to
have the application settings move with you.
Because Windows 9x ships with profiles turned off by default (so that every user has the same settings),
you’ll want to make sure you turn them on. You can do this by clicking the Start button, choosing
Settings|Control Panel, selecting Passwords, choosing the User Profiles tab in the Passwords Properties
dialog box, and then making the appropriate changes (see Figure 16.2).
Figure 16.2 The Windows 9x Control Panel allows you to turn profiles on or off for a given machine.
Many corporate networks use the settings shown in this figure.
Where do the user profiles live? On a Windows NT network, as well as on Novell 4.x and higher, they
live in the users’ home directories. On Novell 3.x, they live in the SYS:MAIL directory, under directories
named for the users’ unique numeric user IDs. (You can determine what a particular user’s unique
numeric ID is by choosing SYSCON|User Information|User Name|Other Information.)