Windows Server® 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit

Setting Standards with Mandatory Profiles

One issue with roaming profiles is that users can change them. On the one hand, that’s the point. On the other, change can cause problems. If users can change their profile, they can delete icons, accidentally resize their toolbar so that it disappears, add wallpaper that slows down their logon time, and so on.

One way to avoid this is to set policies controlling what users can and cannot do, and Chapter 5 explains how to do this. Another way to prevent users from making permanent changes to their profile is to make the user profile immutable. A user can change settings, but those settings will not be saved and will disappear with the next logon.

Profiles that don’t change are called mandatory profiles