A system and method to allow valid profiles in autonomic computing discover is presented. A client accesses a network and sends a profile information request to a central computing device, such as a server. The server identifies client properties, such as the client's location and a user functionality description which corresponds to the client's user. The server uses the identified client properties to select an appropriate master profile from a master profile look-up table. The server sends master profile information, such as the master profile's pathname and revision time, to the client. In turn, the client determines whether it already has a valid profile or whether it should download an up-to-date version. If the client requires an up-to-date profile version, the client downloads the master profile from the server and uses the downloaded profile for various computing tasks.