How To Reset Your Profile

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The UBC_ECE domain is provisioned using some older technology. Plans are in place to upgrade this service but, until that time, you may experience what can be described best as "corrupt profile" problems. The solution to these problems is to reset your profile.

To reset your profile, you need to:

  1. logout from Windows
  2. login to UNIX system (use your neighbour's computer for a second to ssh to ssh-linux.ece.ubc.ca)
  3. rename your profile directory with mv profile profile.save
  4. logout from UNIX
  5. login to Windows; you will get a warning about your profile; ignore it
  6. logout from Windows; logging out is what actually creates the new profile
  7. login to Windows and restore files from profile.save directory, if necessary; delete profile.save to free up disk space

At this point problems with downloading files, surfing the Internet, assigning the default printer and printing PDF files should be gone. If you still have a problem, let us know by emailing help@ece.ubc.ca.

If this is too complicated, email help@ece.ubc.ca and we will remove your profile (brute force, but it works).

Please do not save any files on the "Desktop" or in "My Documents". Files stored in these locations are copied between the PC and file server every time you log in or out. Having a large number of files in these locations will cause login times to increases. Most importantly, files left in these locations may not be reliably saved to the file server. At all times, you should store your files in your Z:-drive.

Please consider changing your settings in Windows to store the minimum number of files on the "Desktop" and in "My Documents". For example, please change the settings for IE to reduce the cache to 10-20MB. Large caches will take a very long time to copy from the server, increasing login times to several minutes. Please see How To Keep Your Profile Small.