David Kitchen

I work with various clients and am given accounts on their networks, some of those clients use roaming profiles and it’s not unusual to find myself spending 20 minutes waiting for a roaming profile to load up from India, Australia or the United States (via Canada).

The simplest method I’ve found to reducing the time it takes to load a roaming profile is to move all of the files that you don’t want to roam with, out of the profile. And the quickest way to achieve that is to shift all of the temporary files that you create just by using your account out of your profile.

Note: The following is a security risk as things in your profile are only accessible by you and by moving them into a public location on the computer you make them accessible to all users of the system.

Note 2: Throughout this guide I’ve used %appdata% as a shortcut for the application data path. This is an environment variable, but if you see %appdata%/Local then you should enter the %appdata% bit and then go up a folder to the Local folder.

Preparation:

Create a folder named C:\Temp\

Within that folder create four more folders:

C:\Temp\User\

C:\Temp\IE\

C:\Temp\Firefox\

C:\Temp\Chrome\

Moving Files:

Temp Files

On Windows XP right click My Computer > Properties.

On Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008: Start > Type “System” > Open “System” > Advanced System Settings.

On all Windows machines:

System Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables

Edit the TEMP and TMP variables within the User (top part) section to point to:

C:\Temp\User\

Now that you have moved the folder, you need to log off and log back on for it to fully take effect (running programs will still be looking at the old location). Once you have done that you can browse to %appdata%\Temp (WinXp) or %appdata%\Local\Temp (WinVista, WinServer2008) and delete all of the old temporary files.

Optional: If you’re doing this to put all of the temp files onto a flash drive that is permanently attached, you can also adjust the System variables, create a folder named C:\Temp\Sys\ for that and edit the lower section so TEMP and TMP point to that folder. You will need to reboot to be able to delete the old files at C:\Windows\Temp .

Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files

Internet Options > General > Browsing history > Settings > Move Folder

Now select C:\Temp\IE\ as the folder you want to store the temporary files in and it will prompt you to log off and back on to complete the move.

In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, the old folder does not exist… it is moved. So you have nothing to clean up.

Firefox Cache

In the address bar enter about:config and create a new string value: browser.cache.disk.parent_directory

Set the value of that to: C:\Temp\Firefox\

Restart all Firefox instances and windows and you can now delete the old cache items within %appdata%\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<your profile name>\Cache. Not that you should not delete the profile directory… that would be stupid… just delete the items in the cache directory.

Google Chrome Cache and User Files

Modify the shortcuts that start Google Chrome and add  –user-data-dir=”C:\Temp\Chrome” after the chrome.exe bit.

This will give you a shortcut of:

%appdata%\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe –user-data-dir=”C:\Temp\Chrome”

Before you start Chrome you may want to move any existing profile directory from:

%appdata%\Local\Google\Chrome

to:

C:\Temp\Chrome

If you did this right, the next time you click the Chrome shortcut it will load up the settings from the Temp location and write the cache data there. Note: Chrome will no longer roam with you, but if you’re doing this for speed that’s no bother, and if it’s at work and you’re just using it for a solid browser in times of need then again this probably isn’t a concern for you.