Super-Mandatory User Profiles

Windows 7 also supports super-mandatory profiles. A super-mandatory user profile is similar to a mandatory roaming user profile with one important addition. If network or server problems prevent the user from downloading the mandatory profile, the user is unable to log on.

With a regular mandatory user profile, the user is still able to log on even if the mandatory user profile is unavailable. As a reminder, when a roaming profile is used, it copies the profile to the local system. If a user has previously logged on to a system and has a copy of the profile on the system, Windows 7 will use this if the share for the roaming profile is unavailable.

If you want to ensure that users are not allowed to log on unless the mandatory profile is downloaded, you can configure the profile to be a super-mandatory user profile. A profile is created as a super-mandatory profile by renaming the profile folder with a .man extension.

Note You should use super-mandatory user profiles only when the network is reliable. If network problems prevent users from accessing the share where the profile is stored, users will be prevented from logging on at all.

As a reminder, to create a mandatory roaming profile, the ntuser.dat file (located at the root of the profile) is renamed to ntuser.man. This may be stored in a network share identified as \\DC1\Profiles.

If you want the profile to be a super-mandatory profile, you could name the share Profiles.man so that it's accessed using a UNC path of \\DC1\Profiles.man. In addition to appending the share with .man, you also need to ensure that the client is configured to access the share using the full UNC path, including .man (\\DC1\Profiles.man).