Citrix has a really good document on profiles on this at: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110351
With Citrix profiles you should always consider what happens with My Documents, the Desktop and Internet Cache. On often reported problem is when you have a published application like Word and a user saves their document on the desktop or in My Documents. They then go to their Windows XP workstation and look in My Documents only to find the documents is "lost". There are 2 things you can do:
This is most easily done in Active Directory but you can set things like the default saving location in the Default Profile.
The problem with profiles is the things get corrupt. This is not a problem we encounter much outside the Citrix/Terminal Services world. Normally what a Citrix admin would do is rename the user's roaming profile directory from JDoe to JDoe.old and have the user log on and off again picking up the default profile and copying it to the roaming profile directory. You can then copy any documents, .ini files etc. they have to the new profile and this will get them working again.
There are several types of profiles:
If users don't have a roaming or mandatory profile they will start with the default profile picked up locally on the first Citrix server they log on to. This will then become the basis for their Citrix profile and can be copied back to the roaming profile (if you have one). So, edit your default profiles to make sure it is what you want.
These are the profiles you get by default on each Citrix server if you do nothing to manage your profiles. Changes made in one profile are not captured by another server so users can make configuration changes to colours and program setup on one server and they will have to be repeated next time they log in on another server. The My Documents area is just on the local server which can result in lost documents etc.
This is really only useful in very small setups.
You can set a Terminal Services roaming profile in Active directory on each individual's record. This gets a bit manual to manage. It also has the disadvantage of being fixed for the whole domain and hence probably all of your Citrix servers.
The other place you can set your roaming profile is in an Active Directory policy on the OU you have your Citrix servers in. One of the advantages of doing it here is you can have different profile paths for different groups of servers.
For example if you had a mission critical application server on a silo of perhaps 10 servers then you could put them in their own OU and have a separate roaming or mandatory profile for them.
If you are using Roaming Profiles install the Microsoft Utility UPHClean (MS Knowledge Base article 837115) to make sure they close and set up the AD policy to delete the Cached copies of the roaming profiles like so:
Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->System-->User Profiles, Delete Caches Copies of roaming profiles.
Mandatory profiles and set up by the administrator and as each user logs on they get the Mandatory profile copied down for them. They can make changes to the profile but they are never saved so the user will get a fresh mandatory profile the next time they log in. The wonderful advantage of this is the users can never get corrupt profiles and make silly changes. Unfortunately they lack the flexibility many users require.
There has been a recent trend to use the best features of Mandatory profiles and Roaming profiles together. How? There is a mandatory profile that is modified with log-on and log-off scripts that do registry edits and files copied from a network share or database. Citrix Consulting has their own way of doing this that I don't believe has been released to the public yet and there are other 3rd party methods.
I have attached links to the excellent work of Login Consultants and Jeroen van de Kamp. they have produced a public domain Flex profile kit.
I believe the hybrid profiles will become the modern standard for Citrix and Terminal services profiles. Care should be taken when heading down a path of hybrid profiles as they are not yet officially supported by Citrix and they will probably develop their own public method that will be released in future versions of Citrix software. You don't want to have adopted an incompatible technology that becomes difficult to migrate from.
Users had been printing from Adobe reader as a Citrix published application. When they exit the application their profile should be deleted from the Citrix server and saved to their roaming profile.
Instead the deletion is incomplete and their profile is not saved. We find that the only part of the profile on the Citrix server after the user exits is:
C:\Documets and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Temp\<a number>\Z@R*.tmp
These Z@R*.tmp files are then locked by something. To remove them we have to reboot the server and manually delete the part profiles. If we don’t do this then the user gets a new profile the next day based on the default profile. After time they end up with dozens of entries in the profile directory C:\Documets and Settings each with nothing but these old Z@R*.tmp files in them.
As a resolution I did a cross grade to Adobe reader Ver 5 which fixed it. Talking to a programmer friend and reading all I could find on the Internet it appears that these Z@R*.tmp are font files. If the Adobe Reader exits with an error it does not take the locks off the Z@R*.tmp files.
The Adobe reader version 5 does not handle the font files in this way. This is a bug with Adobe reader and they will have to fix the bug before it can be considered Citrix/Terminal Services compatible.
You can always user Foxit as a pdf file reader. It is lighter and faster
than the Adobe reader.
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