Mandatory profiles are profiles that are pre configured by the administrator and stored in a central location on the network. You can add in printers, shortcuts to the desktop etc. Although a user can make changes to the profile while they are logged in when they log out the changes will not be saved back. When they log back in again they will get the original profile. Here I describe advantages and disadvantages as well as describing how to create and assign a mandatory profile.
 

There are both advantages and disadvantages to this type of setup which have been listed below:Advantages
Very few problems with profile corruption.
No problems with profile size, people saving folders on their desktop etc.
The administrator can dictate what the users see.
The same profile can be assigned to your whole organisation making deployment simple or you could create several seperate ones for different departments etc.

Disadvantages
There are often profile specific things such as printers , or network drives that users require. The two mentioned above can be set by using scripts, policies or Active Directory settings but this will require sufficient knowledgs and of course more administration.
Application settings will not be retained. If these are needed then mandatory profiles are probably not the way to go.

How to create a mandatory profile
1.) First of all create a standard user account and login as this user.
2.) Make the changes you require in this profile, desktop settings, appearance etc.
3.) Logoff. The profile will automatically be created in c:\documents and settings\username
4.) Create a network share assigning the permissions of at least read and execute for all the users who may need access to this folder.
5.) Copy the contents of the folder in step 3 to the new folder on the network share in step 4. (Ensure you have view hidden files or folders on as some of them are hidden.) 
6.)  In this new folder you will see a file called ntuser.dat. Rename this to ntuser.man

Assigning the mandatory profile
1.) Open up Active Directory Users and Computers.
2.) Right click the user you want to assign this to and select properties.
3.) On the Terminal Services tab (Can also be used on the roaming profile tab if required.) in the profile path fill in the path to the new profile. Will be in a format similair to file://servername/sharename/profilename
4.) Click OK.

Tip: If you wish to deploy to multiple accounts at the same time then Microsoft have created a free tool called ADEdit which will achieve this. It’s free and can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.