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Windows Roaming Profiles
In the College of Technology we use roaming profiles. A roaming profile allows your desktop settings, Internet Explorer favorites, cookies, wallpaper, mail profile & various software configuration settings to travel with you as you move from machine to machine within the TCN network.
The profiles have a 15 MB quota limit set on them. This allows for fast login times by minimizing the profile size downloaded from the network at each logon.
Profile Tray Icon
Near the clock at the bottom right-hand side of your screen should be the system tray profile icon which indicates the status of your user profile in regard to how close you are to the 15mb quota. It will look like one of the following three icons.
under quota, warning-close to quota, over quota
If you have “Hide Inactive Icons” turned on, you may have click the arrow button shown below to display the profile quota icon.
Double-clicking on this icon will bring up the following window which displays detailed information regarding the files that are using up the most space in your profile. You can use Windows Explorer (“My Computer”) to move or delete unnecessary files or folders.
Some applications save data into the user profile space which places the profile over the quota at which point you will receive an error message similar to the following:
You will not be able to logout of your machine until this is corrected. While we have taken several measures to prevent some programs from doing this, there are several steps you can take to resolve this problem yourself. Following the notes in the rest of this document should help.
Files on Desktop
As a best practice, you should not save files on your desktop since this will count against the profile. It is better to save them to your H:\ drive instead. You can then make a shortcut on your desktop to the file which takes up very little space. To make a shortcut to a folder/file on your H:\ drive, open up your H:\ drive to the folder/file, right mouse click and drag the item to your desktop, and when you release the mouse, select “Create Shortcuts Here”.
My Documents
This is an icon that you can have displayed on your desktop to get access your common documents. For many programs, this is the default location they direct you to save your files in and is a link in the common “Save As…” dialog box shown below (middle button on the left).
By default, My Documents is a folder located under your profile. If you click on the “My Documents” icon on your desktop and go to Properties, you can change where you want this to go to. We recommend redirecting “My Documents” from “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents” to your H:\ drive where you have much more space available to you. It will prompt you whether or not you want to move the files to the new location, answer “Yes”.
Change this: To this:
And select Yes
Java Setting
By default, Sun Java saves temporary java files in your user profile in folders with names like .java and .javacache. These do not automatically get cleared out and will easily fill up your user profile. To keep these files from filling up your user profile space, adjust the Java settings as follows.
- Go to Start->Settings->Control Panel
- If there is an icon for just “Java”, double-click on it, click on “Settings”, and change the “Location” setting to C:\Temp\java_cache as shown below.
- If there is an icon labled “Java Plugin, double-click on it, click on the “Cache” tab, and change the “Location” setting to C:\Temp\java_cache as shown below.
- You can then delete the following folders:
- C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.java
- C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.jpi_cache
- C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Sun\Java\Deployment\Cache
Adobe Acrobat/Reader Organizer
The newer versions of Adobe Acrobat contains a feature that “remembers” the last number of PDF files that you had open in two different ways. Like many other applications, if you open Acrobat and go to the File menu, the last 5 PDF files you opened should be displayed near the bottom of the menu regardless of whether or not the files still exist at those locations. This is normal behavior and should not affect your user profile. There is also a feature called the Organizer which displays the last PDF files you have opened with a thumbnail view and caches this information in your user profile under “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\<version>\organizer70”. In version 7, the organizer is opened by clicking the filing cabinet icon on the right as shown below. In version 8, it can be accessed by clicking on File->Organizer->Open Organizer (Ctrl+Shift+1).
Clicking on the “Clear History” button at the bottom will clear the last PDF files you’ve opened. To prevent this from happening altogether, go to the preferences page in Acrobat (Edit->Preferences or Ctrl+K). In version 7, click on the item on the left labled “Startup”, and check the first two settings. The first is the number of PDF files it will display in the File menu and the second pertains to the Organizer. We suggest setting the second option to “Don’t remember PDFs” as shown below:
Acrobat Preferences version 7
In Acrobat version 8, click the item on the left labeled “Documents” and switch the setting shown below “Remember files in Organizer History for” to “Don’t remember PDFs”
Acrobat Preferences version 8
Search for large files
If adjusting the previous settings does not bring your profile under the 15MB quota, your final option is to search your profile for large or unnecessary files. To do this, navigate to “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>” in Windows Explorer (My Computer) and performing a file search (press the F3 or search button) with the following criteria:
- files over 100kb
- search system folders
- search hidden files and folders
Your search screen should look like one of the following images.
This will provide you a starting point of which files to move or delete. Some folders will be hidden. These hidden folders and files may be viewed by going to Tools->Folder Options, clicking on the View tab and checking “Show hidden folders/files”. Typical folders to search include the following, some of which can be moved to your H:\ drive or deleted completely and will get re-created the next time the application is launched:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Access
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Clip Organizer
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Word
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Desktop (for files saved directly to the desktop)
Any files located under “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings” do not count against your profile, so removing these files is not necessary.
Note: Do NOT delete the ntuser.dat file as results may be unpredictable.