Keeping NTUSER.DAT Up To Date
One of the problems we have run into in our environment is how to deal with applications that make entries in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER portion of the registry. Ideally this section of the registry should only be used for user preference settings that differ from the default install.

Unfortunately, many applications either require the default preference to be present or store entries that are not necessarily user preference settings; instead, they store settings that are needed to make the application run.

So what's an administrator to do? If you already use an application or utility such as Seagate Software's WinINSTALL or Novell's NAL (Novell Application Launcher) in combination with Novell's snAppShot utility, you can easily determine the HKEY_CURRENT_USER settings created by application installations. With that information (and these tools) you could create a .REG file that individual users could import before they use a particular application. Of course, that is not a very good solution.

At our location we ensure that our NTUSER.DAT file--the one located in the WINNT\Profiles\Default User\ directory--is up to date. We set up our workstations' NetWare client not to use roaming profiles; instead, we use dynamic and volatile accounts. The dynamic and volatile accounts create an NT account on the local machine when a user logs into the workstation. When the user logs out of the workstation, the account is removed. In this model, each time a user logs into the system, he or she receives a fresh copy of any files including the NTUSER.DAT contained in the C:\WINNT\Profiles\Default User directory. Keeping the NTUSER.DAT file up to date isn't too difficult. Using WinINSTALL, we identify the specific application settings stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and create a .REG file, which can be used to import into NTUSER.DAT. To update the NTUSER.DAT file, we take the following steps:

· Log in to a machine as administrator

· Create a local account for a user (for example, REGUSER)

· Log in as REGUSER

· Import the registry settings via a REG file

· Log onto the machine as administrator

· Copy the NTUSER.DAT file from the REGUSER profile directory to the Default User directory

· Remove the REGUSER account from the local NT machine