Roaming? profiles in XP

Question

I am at a school and am currently enrolled in the computer science class, and thanks to that I have my own user account on the network. I was trying to make another account like this, which currently has adminmistrative privileges and such. I tried to look up how to make a roaming account, by going to My Computer > Properties > Advanced > User Profiles > and changing it from Local to Roaming, but it won't let me. My computer science user is currently set on Local for that one computer, but I still have access to it all over the network, only the desktop doesn't change on each computer if I change it on one. So I guess I am just asking how to make a roaming profile that I am able to access on any computer connected to that network. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

To have a roaming profile, you must edit your account's properties (read: get a network admin to do it) and set the "User profile" path to a network location; for example, \\thatserver\profiles\ekaj. The location must be a share or directory owned by your account.

Note that roaming profiles often cause more problems than they solve. For example, the profile is copied to the local machine on logon and copied back on logoff; this takes some time. If you log into two computers at once, you will still have independent desktops, and they will get merged only when you log out of both. (That is, if you're lucky. It's more likely that older changes will just get overwritten.)