Configuring a User Account to Use a Roaming Profile

After you have created a PROFILES share and configured it with suitable permissions on a file server, you can configure new user accounts to use roaming user profiles. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log on to a domain controller as a member of the Domain Admins group (or any administrator workstation running an earlier version of Windows on which adminpak.msi has been installed).
2. Open Active Directory Users And Computers and select the OU containing the new user accounts for which you want to enable roaming.
3. Select each user account in the OU that you want to configure. For each account, rightclick it and select Properties.
4. Click the Profile tab, select the check box labeled Profile Path, type \\profile_server \Profiles\%username% in the Profile Path text box, and then click OK.

The selected new user accounts are now ready to use roaming profiles. To complete this procedure, have each user log on to a Windows Vista and later computer using her user credentials. When the user logs on to Windows Vista and later versions for the first time, the Default User.v2 profile is copied from NETLOGON to the user's local profile and then copied as user_name.v2 to the PROFILES share on the profile server. For example, a user named Jacky Chen (jchen@live.com) who logs on to a Windows Vista and later computer for the first time will receive the roaming user profile \\profile_server\Profiles\jchen.v2. The .v2 suffix identifies this profile as compatible only with Windows Vista or later versions.