Home | Resource Guides | Tech Tips | Network Administration | Certification

Tech Tips › Windows NT › Users and Groups

Tech Tips / Windows NT / Users and Groups

User profiles - keep them slim and trim

Roaming profiles ensure that users have their personal settings follow them no matter what machine they log on to. However, these can grow over time and make logons very slow. Service Pack 4 introduced a new registry setting, ExcludeProfileDirs, which can be used to exclude certain directories from the replication of user profiles.

To implement this, perform the following:

1. Start the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
   Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon.
3. From the Edit menu select New | String Value.
4. Enter the name ExcludeProfileDirs and press [Enter].
5. Double-click the new value and set to the relevant areas, separating them by semicolons, for example: Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook; Temporary Internet Files; Personal.
6. Close the Registry Editor.
   

This can also be done via a system policy:

1. Start the Policy Editor.
2. Create a new policy (or open an existing one, provided that it was created after SP4 installation).
3. Double-click Default User.
4. Expand Windows NT User Profiles.
5. Enable Exclude Directories In Roaming Profile.
6. In the data box, type the name of the directories to be excluded.

Note: Please remember that editing your registry can be risky, so always have a verified backup before you begin.