Windows 10: create local mandatory (unchangeable) user profile

user-profileswindows

We have a stand alone (not in a domain) desktop computer running Windows 10 x64 Pro that is connected to a projector.

This computer is used by various teachers for teaching purpose using programs like Autocad, Archicad, Office 2013, Visual Studio and so on.

It often happens that teachers customize the environment moving bars, palettes, changing colors, and other stuff and this annoys the other teachers that have to restore the normal configuration of the environment manually.

So we'd like to create a local mandatory user profile so that every change people do to the environment, every file copied to Desktop or Documents folder etc. , every customization will be lost at next logon. All the infos we found on the web don't work or only work for a domain environment. So, the question is:

Is it possible to create a local mandatory (i.e. unchangeable) profile for a stand alone computer running Windows 10 Pro just using the features offred by the operating system without using third party programs?

We found that forcing the account acting as a temporary account works for our needs but we are not able to remove the warning telling that all data will be lost at logoff: for us this approach can be useful if there is the possibility to eliminate these warnings and notices. Thanks.

Best Answer

I was stuck in similar situation like you. Here is my current solution: Overwrite the profile everytime shutdown using robocopy.

  1. create an account with all default settings you want to use.
  2. make a copy of that profile folder by robocopy. eg, robocopy c:\users\xxx c:\users\xxx_bak /mir /xj
  3. create a bat. "echo d | robocopy c:\users\xxx_bak c:\users\xxx /mir /xj"
  4. set shutdown script to run the bat

for my 10-year-old PC (Core2Duo + new SSD), it takes maybe 10-20 seconds to shutdown for profile with around 300MB.

it can't restore (until next shutdown) if power off suddenly / log out. I thought about using robocopy in start script, just not sure if windows will wait the bat to finish before login. you could try.

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