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Jason WatkinsFlag for United States of America

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Local Mandatory Profile for Windows 7

Hello,

I am trying to configure a public laptop, running Windows 7 Pro, to use a mandatory user profile. I just want the data and changes that may have been made during a user session to not persist at log-off. All of the Microsoft documentation points to using a roaming mandatory profile. I cannot use that, the laptop is not part of any Windows domain.

I have seen a solution where Pharonics Deep-Freeze was the choice, but that is not a possibility here. Any ideas how to pull this off?

Thanks
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R. Andrew Koffron
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look over this article I think it might be your solutions.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg176676(WS.10).aspx?ITPID=sprblog
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Thanks! I'll give that a try.
Are you familiar with group policy?

Just enable the following key, and you're set.

User Configuration\AdministrativeTemplates\Desktop
Don't save settings at exit

Here is what I did…
 
1.       Copy default user profile.
     a.       Create a folder in the X:\users dir with a .v2 at the end
     b.      Go to system>advanced system settings>user profiles
     c.       Hit “copy to” on default user, then point it to the .v2 folder you created in X:\users
     d.      Set “permitted to use” to everybody.
2.       Create a new user and put them in a group. (in computer management)
3.       Then under the properties of the user, set the profile path to be the .v2 dir you created under     X:\users (WITH OUT THE .V2 AT THE END)
          a.       Exp. If your .v2 directory is “C:\users\test.v2” the path you would use is “C:\users\test” it  figures out it’s a mandatory profile.
4.       The last thing you need to do is, change the ntuser.dat to ntuser.man
It seems you are taking the wrong approach, and going way overboard to do a simple task. If you have a public PC, and you don't want users to save data, its a very simple task. Make the user limited, and do one of these tasks:

-Programs like Deep Freeze, SteadyState, Clean Slate work wonderfully, but if you can't use that...
-A batch file or startup script to delete the user profile at each reboot, and replace it with the default profile.
-Or just configure group policy to not save the settings at reboot. You don't have to be on a domain to edit local group policy.
The "Do not save settings at exit" setting did absolutely nothing.

I am no good with scripting and cannot create such a script to delete the profile at logoff.
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That approach works as well. Thanks!