Profile Corrupt: User Cannot Logon

[DaveP]

We have a situation where users cannot logon at specific stations. The error message is the well known '..cannot find your profile..' or words to that effect. Upon investigation I have found that I can allow the affected users to logon again by logging on as administrator and deleting the users' folder created at logon in C:\Documents and Settings. That is the easy part. My questions are why is this happening:

Only to some users.
Only at some stations.
Much more frequently now than before.

Server OS: Windows 2003.
Workstation OS: XP Professional SP2 (Including latest patches, but not IE 7)

If anyone can point me in the direction of known causes that I could investigate I would be very grateful. Many thanks.

[witch]

Is it always at the same stations? I have the same thing but the stations change. As do the users - it certainly isn't always the same ones.
I delete the user.dat from the server and it is usually OK after that for a bit. I am redoing it about twice a month now - it has definitely reduced in frequency since I ghosted the machines with clean stuff. As the crap builds up again, I expect the problem will return. But I dont know why

[ChrisH]

You need to run delprof on startup and shutdown to clear these profiles. If you do a search on delprof you will find all the instructions plus the user hive cleanup service.

[Kyle]

I have used this script on all my domain clients, I always leave the default user folder in the script but be aware that sometimes it does delete it. I do not know why this seems to be random. I always have Administrator and All user profile left. As all my pc's are domain PCs they never have a user log on locally and all the pupils/staff have either a roaming profile or a mandatory profile.

Hope it is as successful for you. (Use at your own risk)

Copy and paste the text below into notepad and save as vbs.





Function Main()
On Error Resume Next
Dim obtain folder
Dim Pathfinder
Dim strPath


Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

strPath = "C:\Documents and Settings\"

Set f = fso.GetFolder(strPath)

' Loop through all subfolders
For Each fldrItem in f.SubFolders

fldrName = fldrItem.name

If Right(strPath,1) <> "\" Then
Pathfinder = strPath & "\" & fldrName
Else
Pathfinder = strPath & fldrName
End If

Select Case fldrName
Case "Administrator":
Case "All Users":
Case "Default User":
Case Else:

set obtain folder = fso.GetFolder(Pathfinder)
obtainfolder.Delete true
End Select

Next

' Clean up objects
Set fso = Nothing
Set fc = Nothing

End Function

call Main()

[ChrisH]

You can leave a copy of the Default user folder on your netlogon share kyle and the clients will all use that.