Managing user profiles in a Terminal Services environment

Here are a few tips for managing user profiles in a Terminal Services environment using only native or readily available free Windows tools:

Keep user profiles as small as possible by redirecting My Documents, Desktop, and other heavily-used folders to home folder locations by using Group Policy Folder Redirection.

Use Group Policy to force local profiles on terminal servers that don't need roamed settings.

Use Group Policy to disable the "Turn off Resultant Set of Policy Logging" policy setting in order to speed up logon times.

Download the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean) tool from the Microsoft Download Center and use it to troubleshoot problems with unload user profiles such as processes that leak registry handles. For more information about UPHClean see the UPHClean team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/uphclean.

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