Disable roaming profiles.

[tarrant64]

I am looking for a way to disable roaming profiles for my unattended installations. I know going through gpedit.msc I can disable it, but I don't want to have to do that for every new installation.

Is there a registry edit that can be applied that does this? I only want to use local profiles in my setups.

Thanks!

[Vadikan]

Pretty much all group policies have their registry equivalents. In your case it is

Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles

Only allow local user profiles

At least Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Windows Server 2003 family

This setting determines if roaming user profiles are available on a particular computer. By default, when roaming profile users log on to a computer, their roaming profile is copied down to the local computer. If they have already logged on to this computer in the past, the roaming profile is merged with the local profile. Similarly, when the user logs off this computer, the local copy of their profile, including any changes they have made, is merged with the server copy of their profile. Using the setting, you can prevent users configured to use roaming profiles from receiving their profile on a specific computer. If you enable this setting, the following occurs on the affected computer: At first logon, the user receives a new local profile, rather than the roaming profile. At logoff, changes are saved to the local profile. All subsequent logons use the local profile. If you disable this setting or do not configure it, the default behavior occurs, as indicated above. If you enable both the Prevent Roaming Profile changes from propagating to the server setting and the Only allow local user profiles setting, roaming profiles are disabled. Note: This setting only affects roaming profile users.

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System!LocalProfile

!parameter means: parameter=dword:00000001 (enabled) or dword:00000000 (disabled)

Source: Group Policy Reference

Alternatively, you can distribute .adm files.

Edited November 13, 2006 by Vadikan

[tarrant64]

Thanks a lot! Exactly what I was looking for.

[Vadikan]

Oh, now I see what the PM was about You're welcome!

[cluberti]

It's worth noting that almost all group policy settings are enforced via the registry, and you can easily see (most times) what you're looking for by editing the .adm and finding the entry you are configuring. This will tell you what registry key and value are being modified, and what the appropriate values are.