Windows server 2003 r2 and windows vista business

I have just bought 2 new laptops to go on my domain. And have decided instead of downgrading to Windows XP Pro, to leave them on Windows Vista Business but our servers are still on WIndows server 2003 R2. Set them all up and confied them to the domain no problem, but i was logged on as the network admin at the time. went to give the first out to the teacher, they log on and there user data is not dragged in, but it has applied all of the group policy.

My set up for staff is that they have roaming profiles which coppies all there data to the laptop at each login. I have checked in the users folder on tthe local pc and nothing has been created in there for the user which has tried to login.

I know it is possible to have vista on a 2003 domain. but cant understand why the user data isnt getting carried over during the login process.

The user data wont carry accross becuase it is not Windows XP.

Windows Vista has a new profile system so that means it cant use the XP Profile. For the user it will have a Visa profile and an XP profile.

Got you. Is this the same for server 2008 you cant carry over user data on roaming profiles on xp clients?

Same for Server 2008, you cant carry the data over

Ah bum.

What's the solution lol?

I've been googling around and figured you guys must have come across this before. I know exactly what the problem is but I thought they'd be a simple solution. At first I thought "umm a variable like %profilepath%\%username%" might do the trick but I can't find it.

Anybody else running a Windows Server 2003 domain with both Vista+XP clients ? :)

Your help is much appreciated right now lol, even if its just a link to a 20 page howto document :P

Many Thanks

Me¬

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Originally Posted by techyphil

Ah bum.

What's the solution lol?

I've been googling around and figured you guys must have come across this before. I know exactly what the problem is but I thought they'd be a simple solution. At first I thought "umm a variable like %profilepath%\%username%" might do the trick but I can't find it.

Anybody else running a Windows Server 2003 domain with both Vista+XP clients ? :)

Your help is much appreciated right now lol, even if its just a link to a 20 page howto document :P

Many Thanks

Me¬

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You will have 2 profiles one for Vista and one for XP you cant share one

Unfortunately there is no easy way to have XP and Vista using the same roaming profile. Something Microsoft should of left well alone.

2000/XP/2003 process v1 profiles, whereas Vista creates and only processes v2 profiles. You could try making an existing XP profile Vista compatible, adding .v2 to the end of the profile folder name should allow Vista to process the profile.

The profile path in Active Directory would read:

Code:

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\\SERVERNAME\PROFILES$\JBLOGGS

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But the folder name would be JBLOGGS.v2 within the Profiles$ share.

that doesnt work i'm afraid, it wont copy over. Best thing you can do is set up so they dont have roaming profiles, as you will lose too much time logging in after a while. Set them up with the same profile throughout.

Another option could be to set all your staff to Windows Vista / 7 as they DO share roaming profiles.

Quote:

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Another option could be to set all your staff to Windows Vista / 7 as they DO share roaming profiles

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If it doesn't work, then personally I would install XP on those two machines, skip Windows Vista and look to deploy Windows 7 throughout at a later date. Even running 2000/XP in a mixed environment does have some problems.

You can share some of it by using folder redirection to redirect things like the desktop and the favorites to the XP location. This does not get coppied down to the laptops though so you must be connected to the network to access them unless you implement offline files to.

I guess that you could probably get this going in a bit of a hack way by using reparse points on the server to redirect stuff like the desktop and favorites to the same place on the server. This would then let you use the profile copy method but this again would not be a good plan for stuff like application data which is different and so would need to be kept seporate. This would also need to be done manually for each user.

Offline files in Vista ar ea lot more robust and so are a good solution but you cannot use them on redirected appdata folders as the files are open while the system is in use and it will interupt and stop the file sync.

Personally I would just talk to the teachers involved and tell them that the profiles for their laptop and the rest of the school are different. The concept of different computer different profile is not too hard to convey and so long as the teachers are a little understanding it is a perfectly valid solution as long as the documents are handled seporatly so that they are avalible through both systems.