1.) Make a local user on the server (Windows Server 2008 R2 in my environment)
2.) Make the user member of the local administrators group on your server
3.) Login in with this user and customize for example the start menu
4.) Logoff and login again with an administrator account
5.) Create a share on your file server. For example \\SRV-RDSDC-01\TSmandatory
6.) For share permissions choose Everyone Full Control, NTFS permissions choose Authenticated Users Read
7.) Turn off Caching on this share
8.) Copy the complete template folder from the C:\Users directory to the new TSmandatory share
9.) Rename the template folder to TSmandatory.V2
You have to add the .V2 in the name of your folder, because it’s the new profile type in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2!
10.) Delete the Local and LocalLow folders from the AppData folder
11.) The next step is to add the right permissions on the mandatory profile
12.) Open REGEDIT and load the NTUSER.DAT hive
13.) Right-click on the TS Mandatory profile and choose permissions
14.) Delete the template user and add the Authenticated Users (Full Control)
15.) Unload the NTUSER.DAT from your registry
16.) Rename the NTUSER.DAT to NTUSER.MAN
17.) When you configure a GPO to specify the location of the Mandatory profile, you’ve to choose to following location:
\\SRV-RDSDC-01\TSmandatory\TSmandatory without the .V2!
Archive for December, 2009
How to: Create a Mandatory profile in Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows 2008 R2 Core Configurator 2.0
With this nice tool you’re able to manage your Windows 2008 R2 server Core Edition through a graphical user interface. This tool is open source, so if you want something more in it, go ahead!
Core Configuration tasks include:
- Product Licensing
- Networking Features
- DCPromo Tool
- ISCSI Settings
- Server Roles and Features
- User and Group Permissions
- Share Creation and Deletion
- Dynamic Firewall settings
- Display | Screensaver Settings
- Add & Remove Drivers
- Proxy settings
- Windows Updates (Including WSUS)
- Multipath I/O
-Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails
- JoinDomain and Computer rename
- Add/remove programs
- Services
- WinRM
-Complete logging of all commands executed
You can download the tool here.
How to tell what version of Active Directory you have
If you want to view the current version of your Active Directory you have, you can browse to the following registry key on your domain controller(s).
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTDS\Parameters and select the subkey Schema Version.
13 = Microsoft Windows 2000
30 = Original release version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
31 = Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2
44 = Windows 2008



















