Windows single profile for multiple users

Question

_{Wednesday, May 18, 2016 3:05 PM}

I wanted to know if it is possible for multiple users to share a single profile.

This is to allow the removal of the shared logins on Windows PCs.

Ideally, all users associated with this profile may bring the PC tostandby without closing the session.

All replies (5)

_{Thursday, May 19, 2016 3:22 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Dixon,

i don't think this is possible.

User profile is associated with the User account, which would keep the user specific settings stored in a single place so that the others would be not able to change or modify the settings.

For Enterprise usage, if you owuld like all the user profile are based on the same type and would not allow users to kepp changes, then you may consider deploy Mandatory User Profiles:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb776895(v=vs.85).aspx

Even with profile type deployed, each user would own one session at the time, and client editions of Windows is not allowed to host two or more sessions of Remote connection, which is documented as license agreement.

Regards

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_{Wednesday, May 18, 2016 5:40 PM}

Technically speaking such a scenario does not make scenes. For example you could just have one user and one user profile and then multiple users use it. You don't need to create multiple users. 

_{Friday, March 29, 2019 7:21 PM}

Completely disagree. There are situations where you want to have multiple people to access one machine. For example, a lab machine with tools and instruments configured on the profile. We wouldn't want to have to configure this for each and every profile. We do want to maintain security and auditing so that access is limited by domain users and and logging/changes can be traced back to the end user using their unique credentials. 

I'm currently looking into this now to see if it's at all possible.

_{Friday, April 5, 2019 4:18 PM}

Durden871, did you find a solution? 

Thanks!

- Michael

_{Thursday, August 15, 2019 11:45 AM}

@Durden871

We used to use a program called User Profile Manager from ForensIT, but it is no longer being developed or supported.

It allowed us to share the same profile, with programs and settings configured once, amongst a dozen or so users.

Unfortunately we can't continue to use it because it was causing too many issues, like the start menu breaking in Windows 10, but I would love to find an alternative.