18 Microsoft Windows NT Server White Paper
Be cautious if you use the Explorer interface to make these changes. If
you have the “Hide file extensions for known file types” option enabled
(this is the default), be sure to check the properties to be sure that there
are not two extensions. For example, say you want to make a profile man-
datory and you use Explorer to rename the NTuser.dat file name to
NTuser.man. Because of the Hide extensions default, Explorer saves the
file as type .man, but does not display the .man extension. Later, you de-
cide to allow the user to make changes again, and through Explorer, you
rename the file back to NTuser.dat. However, because Explorer was hid-
ing that part of the file name that determines its type, the only thing you
rename is the prefix. The file name is now NTuser.dat.man. To avoid this
situation, you can either rename files from the command line or change
the behavior of Explorer.
Enforcing the Use of the Server-based Profile
In addition to enforcing the read-only property of a profile, the administrator
can duplicate the functionality that was available in Windows NT 3.5x of not
allowing the user to log on unless the server profile is available.
To enforce the use of the server-based profile for a given user:
1. Append the .man extension to the User Profile path in User Manager as
explained in the previous section. (Skip this step for users who have ex-
isting Windows NT 3.5x profiles and who already have the .man extension
appended to their profile paths.)
2. If the user already has a Windows NT 3.5x mandatory profile on the
server, change the name of the folder where the Windows NT 4.0 roaming
profile currently exists to foldername.pdm. If the user logs on to a
Windows NT 4.0-based workstation and the User Profile path contains
the .man extension, Windows NT will determine that a mandatory
Windows NT 3.5x profile exists and will automatically replace the .man
extension with .pdm and will look for the directory path configured in the
User Profile path. For example, at logon if the User Profile path is config-
ured to use \\server\share\username.man, Windows NT will look for
\\server\share\username.pdm for the correct profile to load.
If only the Windows NT 4.0 user profile exists, change the name of the
folder where the Windows NT 4.0 roaming profile exists to folder-
name.man. If the user logs on to a Windows NT 4.0-based workstation
and the User Profile path contains the extension .man, Windows NT will
look for the directory path configured in the User Profile path. If Win-
dows NT does not find the directory, it will replace the .man extension with
.pdm, and will check again.
3. If you haven't already done so, change the name of the NTuser.xxx file to
NTuser.dat. (Refer to the section, “Changing the User’s Ability to Modify a
Profile, ” in this document.)
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