Did you turn on "show all files?" User.dat is a hidden/readonly file in the windows directory.

yes i found user.dat on the local machine and i can change that to user.man, but what i was trying to accompolish was to somehow have a user.man profile on the server so that when each of the 40 stations og with their logon script or something, on they will get the same profile. I did not want to have to set them up individual on eash local machine. Is this possible?

A policy set on the server will override a policy set on the PC. Place the policy on the PDC in c:\winnt\system32\repl\import\scripts
That also is shared as \\servername\netlogon
 
If you have any BDCs, and you do not have replication active, put the file on them in the same location. This only will work for win9x machines. For an NT workstation, create a policy using the winNT policy editor on the PDC. Make the setting changes and then save that file in the directory above, but name it NTconfig.pol or NTconfig.man
 
-RY

now really mixed up do you mean put the profile user.man or what policy do you mean? in the c:\winnt\system32\repl\import\scripts
in that spot i have my logon batch files. do you mean put something in the logon batch file?

I'd have to check it out some more, as I have not worked with win9x profiles in a long time. Thinking back on it, I might have had to set it up on each machine. I know with nt workstation, you can create a policy and place it in the netlogon folder to handle those systems. I'm not sure if it would work with win9x as they store hardware info in the user.dat file.

according to MSKB Q161809 it is ossible, but i did everything in both articles and it doesn't work. step 7 says find user.dat on nt server and it is not on the server. i don't understand why.