Keeping Local User Account Clean?

Question

I work for a training firm that has a set of computers that are available for people that are taking courses at our company. All of the machines are running Windows 7 and are not connected to a domain.

Question

Is it possible to reset local user account profile settings, and ensure any saved files get wiped upon logoff of the local user accounts? I'd like to make sure that what the user did on the account gets reset, and any locally saved files get deleted per each logon and/or logoff?

Answer 1

If you're looking for a configuration of Windows 7 then you can look at Creating a Mandatory User Profile. If you're software shopping, then you may want to check out Software Recommendations

Mandatory User Profiles

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.

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Creating a Mandatory User Profile

_{Applies To: Windows 7}

The first step to creating a mandatory user profile is to create a default user profile. The section titled Configuring Standard User Accounts, describes how to create a default user profile. You must create a folder for the mandatory user profile and configure its permissions so that everyone can access it. Then you copy the default user profile to the mandatory user profile folder.

Windows 7 recognizes a mandatory user profile that is based on the name of the registry hive file. Each user profile contains a registry hive file named Ntuser.dat, which contains the user’s registry settings. Renaming it to Ntuser.man causes Windows 7 to make the user profile mandatory.

To create a mandatory user profile

1. Copy the default user profile that you created in Configuring Standard User Accounts to C:\Users on the shared computer.
2. Rename the folder Mandatory.v2. (The root part of the file name can be anything you like, but the folder name must end with “.v2” to identify it as a Windows 7 user profile folder.)

3. Use the following procedure to rename Ntuser.dat to Ntuser.man:

   a. Open C:\Users\Mandatory.v2 in Windows Explorer.

   b. In Windows Explorer, click Organize, and then click Folder and search options.

   c. On the View tab, select the Show hidden files and folders check box, clear the Hide protected operating system files check box, click Yes to confirm that you want to show operating system files, and then click OK to save your changes.

   d. Rename Ntuser.dat to Ntuser.man. Figure 3 shows what this should look like in Windows Explorer with hidden files showing.

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Answer 2

It might be overkill, but the most common product I've heard of for resetting computers is Faronics Deep Freeze, http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze/.