Windows Vista - Default Profiles + Mass Deployment - Any Advice?

[Jayce]

I work at a school district with quite a few computers... we've stuck with Windows XP Professional with intention of skipping over Vista and going to Windows 7. Despite our desire to hit Windows 7 this time next year, some things have changed and we will be introducing several hundred Vista computers to the district (either Business or Home Premium).

I use Vista at home, but I'm trying to look ahead and be smart about my lack of knowledge in the nitty gritty of Vista.

At work, there's several things I do to basic installs.

Shut off the firewall, along with the notification for the firewall.
Disable "show last user" at the login screen.
Add printers, adjust settings accordingly (black and white only ink, etc)
Firefox/IE home page and settings.
Desktop icons.

etc...

Then I copy that information to the default profile and bam! Anybody who logs in automatically takes on those settings.

In Vista, are the default profiles relatively the same? Is there anything about Vista I should know about? I need to learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, because the minute those computers come in (in 7-10 days) it's full bore mass cloning and deployment.

Thanks, doods.

 

[synergy]

I would push those requirements through Group Policy and/or run a login script. I'm honestly not that sure about the Default User profile in Vista and only used that in XP for basic things like controlling wallpapers and stuff. Group Policy is more powerful for enforcing the kind of requirements you need in my opinion. Of course this is assuming your on Active Directory and are using Server 03 or 08.

 

[Jayce]

I would push those requirements through Group Policy and/or run a login script. I'm honestly not that sure about the Default User profile in Vista and only used that in XP for basic things like controlling wallpapers and stuff. Group Policy is more powerful for enforcing the kind of requirements you need in my opinion. Of course this is assuming your on Active Directory and are using Server 03 or 08.

We do have group policy. A lot of the things I listed are handled by local group policy, such as removing the last user shown at login screen, etc.

However, user profiles are a great way to keep a system in working order. The user's "my documents" folder is automatically routed out to the server, which is housed in each building. So there's no personal data on any of the computers. Then if a user changes something in their profile, where they delete a printer or something, we just simply delete their profile and they log back in. Then they re-generate the default profile. I honestly can't see how there's a better way than that...

But, anyway. I heard a rumor that Vista profiles were different than XP, hence why I was curious...

 

[synergy]

So are you using roaming profiles then, or just mapping the My Documents folder only to the server? If you use roaming profiles you should be able to set the Default User profile on the server only and obtain what you want. Which version of Server are you running?

 

[KSoD]

Yes the Vista profiles are different. Cause now there are 3 folders in which the data can be stored for the software. There is Local, Local Low and Roaming.

Things like Chrome are stored in Local.
Opera, Mozilla and others are stored in Roaming. Along with the desktop icons and shortcuts are stored in the Roaming.

So you have to pay attention when you decide to just copy these things over. As it may not work cause they are associated with a specific profile path now.

 

[Jayce]

Great.... I can tell this is going to be a nightmare...

I don't know what version of server we're running at the moment. I know a lot of upgrades are being done but I'm swamped with my work as it is, so I've had very little casual convo with the rest of the group to hear what's going on with the server side of things.

I do believe we are migrating to 2008, though, however we do not use roaming profiles. Their my documents through active directory just automatically maps to their specific folder share on the file server.

I need to have an image built and ready to go in several hours time once the computers come in. It took me a few hours to get my XP image perfect. I don't see how I'm gonna crank out a Vista image in a short amount of time...

 

[Jayce]

My assumption was correct. This is indeed a huge nightmare.

I have two local accounts now on the Vista machine. One that is set up the way I want the default to be and the other account for testing purposes. I found a tutorial on copying the default profile and to my pleasant surprise, after a 6 minute login wait (which alone is unacceptable) it only copied my desktop icons and home page to firefox. It didn't bring over any critical settings that we need for the educational software we run.

Does anybody here know pinpointed EXACTLY what I need to do to get the entire profile "user" copied to "default" so ALL users that log in get EXACTLY 110% the same profile as I set up with the original local user named "user"?

I know about group policy. We use it.
I know about roaming profiles. We don't use it.

I just need default profiles on the machine. How can I set them up in Vista?

 

[synergy]

Try this:
Modifying the default profile in Vista

 

[Jayce]

That's the link I tried when I got the above results.

 

[Jayce]

This is my last cry for help... Does anybody have any clue what else I can do?

If I can't set up a default profile in Vista in a timely manner, we will be dropping back to XP Pro to get the job done.

Is Windows 7 set up the same way in terms of default profiles as Vista is? When I searched google all I found were pages upon pages of unanswered threads on other forums of people asking the same question...