Computers that are shared by several people benefit from roaming profiles (copying your registry and settings up and down from a network server) and Dynamic Local User (creating a local Windows account for access to the Desktop).
When a machine is used primarily for a single user (a faculty or staff members "personal" workstation for example) you may wish to opt out of these features.
You might want to bypass the Dynamic Local User (DLU) features for example to grant an account additional rights. Most folks desire to be in the "Administrators" group on their own workstation, and the accounts created by DLU are not.
You might want to bypass Roaming Profiles for users who rarely if ever stray from a single workstation. Doing so means no longer having your profile space limited by network quotas. If you turn off roaming profiles, then DLU will not function and you'll need to create an account for every potential user of the workstation.
How to bypass DLU
Bypassing DLU for a few users is a quick and easy thing to do. Just create a local account on the workstation and sync the password with NDS. Others can still use the workstation, as DLU is enabled, but the local account will not be managed by NDS and so can be independant of the DLU policies.
WolfPrep installs a service called "Cleanup" which prevents leaving accounts and or data behind should there be an issue with roaming profiles. Any local Windows accounts that you create must be excluded from this process. Any accounts that you create to bypass DLU should be enumerated in the registry.
To create a local user, right click on the "My Computer" icon and choose "Manage" from the context menu provided, or start mmc (the Microsoft management Console) and add the "Local Users and Groups" plugin.
You can add new local user accounts by right clicking on the "Users" folder under "Local Users and Groups" and choosing "New User" from the context menu.
NOTE: You MUST set the local windows account's password to match the NDS password, or you will get prompted for the Windows password at login. There is a checkbox that syncs the NDS and local password on a successful login. If the passwords match, no extra prompts are presented.
You must right click on a username and go to the "Properties | Member of" context menu to add users to the Administrators or Power Users groups.
Please note that these local accounts are genuinely local to the partiticular workstation. When one changes one's network password, the local account is NOT updated. If you have local accounts on several machines, you will have to set the password seperately on each machine. If you're using an Active Directory to manage accounts on many machines, you will need to sync your new password in the Active Directory.
WolfPrep does not automate the creating of these local accounts because of the requirement to have the password syncronized. If you any thoughts about how this could be accomplished and managed, please drop us a line at
How to bypass Roaming Profiles
If you replace the Novell login screen with the Microsoft one, then DLU will not function on that machine. The user will login with their local workstation account, and then attach to the Novell servers, too late in the process to download a roaming profile.
If you choose this option, you will need to either create all the accounts that will be used on that workstation locally, or maintain them in Active Directory.
To disable the initial Novell Login, bring up the Properties of the Novell Client in the Networking Control Panel and set "Initial Novell Login" to "Off" under the "Advanced Login -> Execution Options" tab.
You will need to reboot for this change to take effect.
You can automate this installation by placing a .reg file in your CustomReg template folder that set the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GinaDLL to the string "MSGINA.DLL"
As mentioned in the section regarding bypassing DLU, any local accounts that you create should be enumerated in the registry so they won't be deleted by the CLEANUP service.
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