Mapping H Drive

[LeonieCol]

Our staff all have an automatic mapping of drive 'H' to their private areas on the network. All of the private staff folders are held in a folder called 'staff' on the server.

Recently, for some unknown reason, some staff seem to lose this mapping and instead are faced with just a simple 'staff' mapping instead.

What is even more strange, is that when you go into this, you would assume that you would either see all of the staff folders (although only be able to access your own) or that you would only see your own folder. But instead, all they see is a folder with the name of one of our technicians(!) and within that is a folder called 'My Pictures' which is empty. Obviously this makes the affected staff think that this particular technician has been doing something dodgy with their files!

It is a complete mystery as to why this is happening, and it certainly isn't making the ICT Support team look very good! I've seen cases of this before where the 'staff' folder is present, but never a case like this.

Usually rebooting sorts out the problem, but it seems to be happening so often now!

Thanks.

[robunger]

I've seen this problem before with XP clients where the users home path in AD is something like connect S: to \\servername\users$\staff\%username% and the client is mapping the S: to \\servername\users$

I put it down to a slowish network connection and ended up setting a GPO under Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon\ Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon:enabled

This seems to help remedy the problem although it can increase logon time. Give it a go on a test OU maybe and let us know...

[robunger]

I also found this

The Home Folder may be mapping incorrectly when logging on to a Windows XP-based computer

[mossj]

as for only the technicians folder showing, could it be that his folder is unhidden whilst all the other user areas are hidden? hence when a computer goes to the root all they see is the technicians folder?

[Michael]

If you check the event logs on the machine which failed to map H:\ it'll give you some clues as to why it failed. You can of course do this remotely using MMC which is easier.

But instead, all they see is a folder with the name of one of our technicians(!) and within that is a folder called 'My Pictures' which is empty.

This'll be to do with the profile. I suspect the technician used their username to create a default profile, which can then be used for one or more users. This is how I do it too Generally speaking your problem is going to be either permissions relating to the share or a conflicting setting in the profile.

As a recommendation, to create a profile for others to use, make a copy of an existing domain administrator account, but don't specify any home directory in Active Directory. Leave it blank. Once the profile is created it'll contain no home path information. When allocated to other users, it should map their home path correctly.

[LeonieCol]

Thanks everyone. I changed the GPO setting, and also changed the logon script for all users in the NETLOGON folder, so that it deletes the H drive mapping and then re maps it with \\servername\staff$\%username%


As for the hidden folders, that particular technician does not have any more unhidden folders than anyone else!


I will have a play around with profiles as I am not too sure what you were saying, Michael. Will need to look into that.