Novell Home

Combatting Roaming Profile Corruption

Novell Cool Solutions: Trench
By Aaron Albery

Digg This - Slashdot This

Posted: 25 Oct 2001

Current version: ZENworks for Desktops 3.2

The following is the procedure I have implemented to combat roaming profile corruption. It is only of use if the corruption is caught first time around, but in these situations it has so far worked 100%.

Do not ask the users to reboot at the point of discovery.

  1. Navigate to the user's home directory.
  2. Right click the Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Profile directory and select copy.
  3. Paste this back into the user's home directory thereby making a directory called "Copy of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Profile".
  4. Ask the user to reboot the machine but NOT log back in to the network.
  5. At this point a network connection will exist so use the \\ machine name\C$ convention to gain access to the user's PC.
  6. Go to the profiles directory and delete any profiles with the user's name and .000, .001 extensions. It is not possible to do this when the user is logged in, as the profile is in use by the system.
  7. Open RegEdt32.
  8. Go to registry, select computer and enter the machine name. This will connect to the remote PC registry.
  9. On the remote PC HKEY_Local_Machine window go to the following key:

    Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

  10. Check the S1_ * keys for any reference to the user's name.
  11. Delete any if they exist.
  12. Select the Registry menu and select Close. This will terminate the connection to the remote registry.
  13. Exit RegEdt32.
  14. Go to the user home directory and rename the NT Workstation Profile directory e.g. Profile.old.
  15. Rename the Copy of Windows 4.0 NT Workstation Profile to Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Profile.
  16. Ask the user to log back in.


© 2014 Novell