The problem: A user with a roaming profile logs on, changes settings in his profile (desktop, start menu, ...) and they are lost as soon as they log off. Also the Windows welcome screen appears every time, as if logging on for the first time on this machine. At first I thought it was a network policy problem, but it turned out it wasn't. Then I checked the security settings on the profiles folder both on the server and the local computer: everything as it should be. On top of that, the problem occurs on every computer in the domain, so it's not related to the local machine. Some other peculiar side effects: User is unable to install network printers, with the message that the user doesn't have sufficient access to the local machine (user is a member of the local and the domain USERS group). For some reason a "Start menu" folder is created in the WINNT folder, which seems to be the menu used. Even when there is a start menu defined in the profiles folder, both on the server and locally. Same thing with the Desktop. Even my own user account, which is part of the domain administrators group, and worked fine until I reinstalled my computer, has become victim to this problem. I still have full access to the registry, but when I try to open the "Environment" tab in the "System properties" screen, I get an error message saying I "Cannot open USER environment section in registry". I'm also quite sure it has nothing to do with the time the userprofile is saved, since the local system time is synchronised with the server during logon. This problem has me completely stumped. Everything seems to be configured correctly, yet user settings are not loaded when a user logs on, or saved when they log off (or both). Any help would be appreciated. K.

I would try taking all policies off a single computer and testing. Is it C2 clamped or just normal NT. You could also try this on a single computer, but I dont think it will sort your problem out. If i have a single profile that won't update i go into screen properties and change the wallpaper to a different one and apply. Then change it back. (changing it back is not necessary, but the users like it back as it was). It seems in NT that this change is significant enough that the profile is forced to update back to the server. Has the profiles directory become corrupt. Create a new user profile in a newly created directory and see if this works. Not sure if any of this will work, but it's a start. Others may be able to expand on this. Cheers Lee

Well, I removed the policy files from the netlogon folder, and I replaced my user profile with the standard user profile except for the desktop and favorites folders, and it worked. Although I don't know why I hadn't tried that myself. I guess it was a corrupted NTuser.dat file. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to recreate the network policy from scratch. BTW, I think it's just plain NT4 with SP6a, both the WS and the server. Thanks, K.