In a large LAN, do any IE settings move to another workstation with the userid?

General Questions
#1

I am currently trying to analyze my way through a problem at work that some people here may know something about. We have a large local area network, and everybody needs to log in using a payroll number in order to work. We also have a particular application – another internal website – which is used by a subset of these people. They have additional userids and passwords for this, which I will call the application userid/password as apposed to the network userid/password.

The problem is that for about three of the people who want to use the application, their application userid and password will not work. It lets them in, but they can’t do anything. Reports are offered, but when they try to access them they get an error message, someting like “1::Null”.

The interesting thing about this is, if these three people log into any workstation in the system, then the application website cannot be used from that login, and it doesn’t matter whether the person is using the workstation that they normally use, or another one. Conversely, if a second employee whose account is not affected in this way uses their own network login to log into an affected user’s normal workstation, then the application worksite will work from that computer. So the problem seems to move with those three users no matter where they are physically when they log into the LAN.

I spoke to a programmer here who works on the report system and he thinks that the users IE settings move with the users even when they are not on their own workstations.

Is that possible?

#2

Yes, profiles can be configured to roam with the user. Ask your network admin if it is configured for it. Might want to try the following also to narrow down the problem.

  1. Login to computer with a user ID that can’t get to the site, and then go to the site, and use the site ID of a user that works to login. If this works then it isn’t the network login causing the problem. If this dosen’t work then it most likley is caused by something in the users profile.

  2. Login to computer with a user ID that can get to the site, and then use a site ID of a user that can’t login. If this works, and the above dosen’t then it is most likley a profile issue. If this dosen’t work, then it is probably a problem with the account for the website.

If after doing those two tests it looks like a profile issue then you will need to compare IE settings between a working profile, and a non working one. There might be a way to transfer settings between network profiles, but I don’t know it.
-Otanx

#3

Assuming you’re an Active Directory shop, it does sound like a roaming profile problem - quite possibly as simple as the affected users don’t have the roaming profile enabled on their IDs.

#4

Not really enough information so far, but I don’t think this can be yet locked down to a profile issue: it sounds more like security settings within the application. What happens when these three people try to use the application using their application login but someone else’s network login? How about when someone else uses one of the three’s network login but their own applcation login?

#5

We’ve done these tests. #1–didn’t work. #2–did work. IOW the behavior is a funcition of the user’s LAN id.

Also I forgot to mention that the affected users are all at one physical location.

#6

If the affected users attempt to use their own application login from a workstation logged in under a non-affected user’s LAN account, then the app works fine.

#7

So we can rule out security restrictions within the application itself. So what’s the difference between a working network login ID and a non-working network login ID? Look at group memberships and policy restrictions.