Administrators' profiles deleted when having Guest status Baboon 12/10/2008 5:20:03 PM Our solution for preventing users from leaving behind profiles on lab machines has been to add the Domain Users group to the Guests group on those machines. As long as a user was a member of the Administrators group on the machine, that user's profile would not be deleted. I just discovered that with Vista, even Adminstrators' profiles are deleted in this scenario (of course I mean users with admin rights who are Domain Users). This happens even if the admin user's profile existed before adding Domain Users to the Guest group. I don't know of a Group Policy setting that will delete user profiles, other than for roaming ones. Can anyone think of a solution for this? (Fortunately Vista has volume shadow copies of everything by default, so I was able to restore the important files from my profile after it was deleted!)

RE: Administrators' profiles deleted when having Guest status v-tiquan[ at ]online.microsoft.com ("Tim Quan [MSFT]") 12/11/2008 10:11:51 AM Hi, Thank you for posting. I have tested this issue on my Windows Vista machine and I can reproduce this issue: If an domain user belongs to both Domain Guests group and a client's local Administrators group, when logging on this user account on the client, a temporarily user profile is created. When logging off this account, this user profile will be deleted. It is not recommended to add Domain Users group to (Domain) Guests group. Now if you would like to prevent users from leaving behind profiles on clients while preserve administrator profiles, you can use the following method: 1. For non- clients' administrator domain users, add them to Domain Guests group. When logging on them on clients, only temporarily profiles will be created 2. For clients' administrator domain users, add them to clients' local Administrators group. When logging on them on clients, permanent profiles will be created. If anything in my e-mail is unclear or you need further help, don't hesitate to let me know. Sincerely, Tim Quan Microsoft Online Community Support ================================================== Get notification to my posts through email? Please refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/managednewsgroups/default.aspx#notif ications. With newsgroups, MSDN subscribers enjoy unlimited, free support as opposed to the limited number of phone-based technical support incidents. Complex issues or server-down situations are not recommended for the newsgroups. Issues of this nature are best handled working with a Microsoft Support Engineer using one of your phone-based incidents. ================================================== This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

RE: Administrators' profiles deleted when having Guest status Baboon 12/11/2008 7:30:17 PM Thanks for the quick and clear reponse. That solution would not work, as we have potentially 10,000 domain users who would use those machines. If I could put all of the non admin users into a group that is exactly what I would have done, but there are just too many. ""Tim Quan [MSFT]"" wrote: [Quoted Text] > Hi, > > Thank you for posting. > > I have tested this issue on my Windows Vista machine and I can reproduce > this issue: > > If an domain user belongs to both Domain Guests group and a client's local > Administrators group, when logging on this user account on the client, a > temporarily user profile is created. When logging off this account, this > user profile will be deleted. > > It is not recommended to add Domain Users group to (Domain) Guests group. > > Now if you would like to prevent users from leaving behind profiles on > clients while preserve administrator profiles, you can use the following > method: > > 1. For non- clients' administrator domain users, add them to Domain Guests > group. When logging on them on clients, only temporarily profiles will be > created > > 2. For clients' administrator domain users, add them to clients' local > Administrators group. When logging on them on clients, permanent profiles > will be created. > > If anything in my e-mail is unclear or you need further help, don't > hesitate to let me know. > > Sincerely, > Tim Quan > Microsoft Online Community Support > > ================================================== > Get notification to my posts through email? Please refer to > http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/managednewsgroups/default.aspx#notif > ications. > > With newsgroups, MSDN subscribers enjoy unlimited, free support as opposed > to the limited number of phone-based technical support incidents. Complex > issues or server-down situations are not recommended for the newsgroups. > Issues of this nature are best handled working with a Microsoft Support > Engineer using one of your phone-based incidents. > ================================================== > > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. > >

RE: Administrators' profiles deleted when having Guest status v-tiquan[ at ]online.microsoft.com ("Tim Quan [MSFT]") 12/12/2008 8:39:32 AM Hi, Thank you for the reply. I understand it is time-consuming. However, I am afraid that you have to do so manually since this is the only way to resolve this issue at the current situation . Sincerely, Tim Quan Microsoft Online Community Support ================================================== Get notification to my posts through email? Please refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/managednewsgroups/default.aspx#notif ications. With newsgroups, MSDN subscribers enjoy unlimited, free support as opposed to the limited number of phone-based technical support incidents. Complex issues or server-down situations are not recommended for the newsgroups. Issues of this nature are best handled working with a Microsoft Support Engineer using one of your phone-based incidents. ================================================== This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.