Server Copy of User Profile May Be Overwritten By Local Copy

• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 95 OEM Service Release versions 1, 2, 2.1

SYMPTOMS

If you are using user profiles and roving profiles, a user's local copy of the profile may overwrite the server copy. The local copy may be out of date or incorrect. The user is not prompted when this occurs.

CAUSE

This behavior can occur in the following situation:

• A user logs on at a workstation that does not contain a local copy of his or her profile, or that contains an outdated local copy of the profile.
• The server copy of the profile is not successfully downloaded when the user logs on (for example, because of network problems).
• The user logs off and then logs back on at the same workstation, but this time the server copy of the profile can be accessed.

Windows compares the date and time stamps of the local and server copies of the profile when a user logs on. The newer copy of the profile overwrites the older copy. In the situation described above, the local copy has changed more recently than the server copy. When the profiles are reconciled, the newer local copy, although incorrect, overwrites the older server copy.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Windows 95 and OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2). An update to address this problem is now available, but is not fully regression tested and should be applied only to computers experiencing this specific problem. Unless you are severely impacted by this specific problem, Microsoft does not recommend implementing this update at this time. Contact Microsoft Technical Support for additional information about the availability of this update.

MORE INFORMATION

This update checks for the sequence of events described above, and prompts the user before overwriting the server copy of the profile with the local copy.

This behavior can also occur when you are using mandatory profiles. You may be able to work around this behavior by setting the security permissions on the User.man file in the user's home folder to read access only.

This behavior can also be resolved using the update described in this article. However, the user is not prompted if the local profile is not synchronize with the mandatory server profile. The server profile is always used.

For additional information about using mandatory profiles in Windows 95, Please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q161809
   TITLE     : How to Create Mandatory Profiles for Win95 Users