Windows 7 in a Domain Environment

Windows 7 seems to be designed entirely with the home user in mind. A lot of the deviation from Windows XP has caused serious issues with Domain Environments which is the main reason business' are not switching over.

As Administrators we need to have the ability to properly administer the workstations in our domains which means full access rights and permissions. Therefore resetting Windows 7 Administrative permissions to those of Windows XP is necessary for any modifications to work properly as long as regular daily users are not given administrative accounts.

The biggest issue is the removal of "Documents" from the Desktop and the addition of the entire Profiles folder instead. In a Domain Environment users should not be saving to or deleting from their profiles folder because they roam. In Domains using mandatory profiles any files saved in the profiles folder are deleted on logoff.

Now folder redirection can be enabled for all folders and there is a Group Policy to restrict users from saving files and folders to the root of their Profile Folder. However, just putting Documents back on the desktop will make the transition from XP far easier and will not cause confusion for users in a mixed environment.

See my link "Documents" to find out how to restore Documents to the Desktop for Windows 7.

Windows 7 does not give administrators the ability to copy profiles. This hopefully will be fixed with a service pack. However, in order to create mandatory profiles you have to copy the profile and then modify the permissions manually.