Disappearing Folder Names

[breakfast11]

Hi
I am a bit of a novice managing networks. I work at a school that has an 2008 R2 Server with XP workstations -with plans to reimage to Windows 7 this year. I have been testing a few things and find the biggest issue is with folder redirection and folder names.

I found that after a user logs onto a windows 7 workstation – and then you go to the shared folder location on the server – in this case …. \\server\students .... from a win 7 box and also on the 08 server - you see 'My documents' folders listed – among the list of names eg for a user 'sam green' ... as in ......
max smith
melinda jones
My documents (Sam's folder)
nathan brown
etc etc
so the user name eg 'sam green' is no longer there - replaced by 'My Documents' - and as more users log in - more names go to be replaced by more 'My Documents' folders

Then on an XP box – browsing to \\server\students you do see the user 'sam green' but with a different icon - folder icon with an envelope in it.

I was hoping to work out how I can structure things so we can still see the actual names of the student on their home folder on a win 7 box. Many staff like to go into their students folders to edit, monitor etc – so would find this tricky.

I understand it may be the way folder redirection is set up – but it needs to work in an existing shared environment with already existing users and home folders.

I hope this is explained clearly enough.

Thankyou

[plexer]

Variius threads with workarounds etc... But the proper fix is to have username\documents and redirect my documents to the sub folder.

Ben

[AJWhite1970]

From the Windows 7 Gotcha Thread, this explains it nicely

When viewing redirected folders share you may see many "My Documents"
When Windows sets up a new redirected My Documents it creates a hidden desktop.ini file which means that when you browse the share/location from Windows you may see a huge amount of folders called "My Documents"/"Documents" rather then the folder name it should be (e.g. \\server\share\username as the path could look like \\server\share\documents)
The folders are correctly named but when Windows sees the existance of the hidden desktop.ini in each directory it displays the folder as "My Documents"/"Documents" rather then the real folder name. This can happen with any special folder I believe such as Favourites.

The solution:
Remove the desktop.ini file in each my docs redirected folder. This can be done with script or using Group Policy Preferences. You can also redirect to a sub folder which hides the issue (e.g. redirect to \\server\share\username\documents\)

---------------------

Personally, I still have a mix of Win XP/7 machines and traditionally my my documents redirects tot he root so I run a simple batch file overnight to delete all the desktop.ini files from the user areas. Not really a fix but at least first thing int he morning all the folder names are correct....

attrib -h -s t:\2010\desktop.ini /s
del t:\2010\desktop.ini /s
attrib -h -s t:\2011\desktop.ini /s
del t:\2011\desktop.ini /s
attrib -h -s t:\2012\desktop.ini /s
del t:\2012\desktop.ini /s

Andrew

[FN-GM]

As @plexer says this one has been discussed to death! Its caused by the desktop.ini file do a search you will find loads of stuff

If you block the desktop.ini file or delete it all the time it will slow down your login speeds. Blocking it makes it particularly bad.

[breakfast11]

Thanks - sorry to bring back the dead guys - but this is new to me! I think i will run some tests on the folder redirection in GP.
Cheers
:-B11

[Roopert]

Personally i preferred the method of using robocopy to move the contents of the users home folders (excepting things like desktop and a few other essentials!) to a 'documents' folder within their home folder.
This was in addition to a csvde output for each username, with some excel magic to create the correct input parameters for the robocopy script.

Once this was complete it required changing the group policies to the new location ie. %homearea%\%username%\documents.

The copying does take a while though, but in my opinion is more preferable to having a GP run every logon.

[breakfast11]

How did you create that extra documents folder in everyones folders?

[plexer]

It'll get created when you set the redirection to the new location if your permissions are correct otherwise you could do with a script or at user login.

Ben

[breakfast11]

It'll get created when you set the redirection to the new location if your permissions are correct otherwise you could do with a script or at user login.

Ben

Yep I can see that from testing a new user in a test ou with a test policy but I am wondering how that will work with existing users who have heaps of folders and files that need to go into the new docs folder.

[plexer]

I ran a robocopy script to move them to the new structure, can post the commandine tomorrow.

Ben