Mandatory Profile

Hi tech guys! I need some help about mandatory profile. What is it exactly?? I do not have any idea about this! I just know it put some restriction for a user on a PC.. I needed some explanation about a mandatory profile and how to create one.. Anyone know about it??

A mandatory user profile is a special type of pre-configured roaming user profile that administrators can use to specify settings for users. With mandatory user profiles, a user can modify his or her desktop, but the changes are not saved when the user logs off. The next time the user logs on, the mandatory user profile created by the administrator is downloaded. There are two types of mandatory profiles: normal mandatory profiles and super-mandatory profiles. User profiles become mandatory profiles when the administrator renames the NTuser.dat file (the registry hive) on the server to NTuser.man. The .man extension causes the user profile to be a read-only profile.User profiles become super-mandatory when the folder name of the profile path ends in .man; for example, \\server\share\mandatoryprofile.man\.Super-mandatory user profiles are similar to normal mandatory profiles, with the exception that users who have super-mandatory profiles cannot log on when the server that stores the mandatory profile is unavailable. Users with normal mandatory profiles can log on with the locally cached copy of the mandatory profile.Only system administrators can make changes to mandatory user profiles.

Assign a Mandatory User Profile


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To assign a mandatory user profile, you must also copy a preconfigured
user profile to the location that you specified in the last step
opening the user profile form.

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
   
2. On the Advanced tab, under User Profiles, click Settings.
   
3. Click the profile that you want to copy, and then click Copy To.
   
4. In the Copy profile to
   box, type or browse to the path of the folder that you specified in
   step 5 in the "Open and Configure the User Profile Name Form" section,
   and then click OK.
   
5. Confirm that the user that is specified under Permitted to use
   is the user who will be accessing this profile. If more than one user
   will be using the copied user profile, you need to select a group that
   contains all of these users, such as the Everyone group.
   
6. Click OK.
   
7. Rename Ntuser.dat to Ntuser.man.
   

Open and Configure the User Profile Name Form


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To complete these procedures successfully, log on as an administrator
or as a member of the Administrators group. If your computer is
connected to a network, you may be unable to complete this procedure
due to network policy settings.

1. Click Start menu, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click Administrative Tools.
   
2. Double-click Computer Management.
   
3. In the console tree, double-click Computer Management, double-click System Tools, double-click Local Users and Groups, and then double-click Users.
   
4. Right-click the user account that you want to modify, and then click Properties.
   
5. On the Profile tab, in the profile path, type the location of the profile that you want to assign in the following format
   
   \\ServerName\ProfilesShareName\UserProfileName
   
   
   where:
   
   
   
   • ServerName is the name of the computer where the profiles are stored.
     
   • ProfilesShareName is the share name where the profiles are stored.
     
   • UserProfileName is the specific folder for this user profile.
     

Configure the Network Folder


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Properly configure the network folder that you specified in step 5 in
the "Open and Configure the User Profile Name Form" section, in which
you opened the user profile form:

1. Double-click the Computer Management on the computer that will contain the user profile folder.
   
2. Select Shared Folders to create a shared folder on the appropriate server
   
3. Grant full control to the Everyone group
   

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Source: Microsoft Support