Profiles in Windows

What is a profile?

In Windows NT, 2000 and XP every user has their own profile. This contains your bookmarks, desktop files and local settings for the programs that you use. The Windows profile is not your home directory.

Common problems that might be a result of faults in your profile

• I get an error message that says the roaming profile is not available
• My bookmarks disappear
• I have to add new settings each time (i.e. profiles in Outlook)
• I have trouble running programs that ran fine before
• Other problems in Windows

All these problems are usually solved by deleting your profile.

Note that if you have trouble with bookmarks and other settings that won't appear, it might also be that you have logged on to another system or different domain.

Different profiles on different systems and domains

You have many different profiles

On the general computer labs, and most other computer labs at NTNU, a roaming profile is used. This means that your profile is stored on a profile server so that you will get the same profile, regardless of what lab you are sitting on.

Unfortunately it's not always that simple. Every login domain has a different profile. Which means you have one profile for WIN-NTNU-NO, and another profile for another domain. WIN-NTNU-NO is the domain for Windows 2000 (and later) computers. Additionally you have a profile for regular Windows XP machines and one for terminal clients.

On top of all this you have different profiles on the general computer labs and most other computer labs as well, even though they use the same login domain. I.e. the general computer labs and the IDI labs use the same domain, WIN-NTNU-NO, but you still have a profile for each of them.

Location of the profiles

The profiles that belongs to the general computer labs all lie in a directory named .profiles on your home directory. The path of this directory is .profil/system/user/os where system i.e. is stud, user is your user-name and OS is either NT, 2000 or 2000TS (terminal client).

Even though a system has a subfolder in the .profil directory, it's not guaranteed that it is in use. I.e. everyone has an IDI directory, but all IDI labs use their own profile servers. That's why there are different methods for deleting your profile from system to system.

The difference between local and roaming profiles

If the machine you are logging into for some reason can't find the central profile, you will get an error message and Windows will create a local profile that's completely empty. Changes you make on this profile will only be stored on the machine you are working on, not on the central profile server.

The next time you log on to this specific machine you will get a message informing you that there is a local profile stored and you will get the opportunity to choose this over the roaming profile. If you don't have a good reason to use the local profile (i.e. you have saved a file on the desktop of that profile) it is recommended that you choose the roaming profile.