My Documents Folder Redirection to a Share?

[link470]

At our school we use a login script that maps each user to a share drive. Share drives are located under \\server1\staff\staffname, and \\server2\students\studentname. The shares are hidden of course with a $ after it, and the login script map's each drive to H:. So I guess what they did when the network was setup, was make that their kind of "home drive" but without using the Home Drive feature in Active Directory user profiles.

So what I would like to do, since many students and staff still save data to their My Documents folder, is to redirect the My Documents folder to their H drives [their share]. Since each user is different and since the data already exists in their H drives, I made the Folder redirection set to "Basic: Redirect everyone's folder to the same location" and then set the path as \\server2\students\%username% for the students. I cannot get it to work for the life of me, and I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or not.

The other reason I want to implement it is because the district uses First Class email, which I'm sure some of you are aware of, and First Class requires a server address to be set in the home.fc file within the First Class settings folder, which resides in My Documents. However, My Documents is different for each user that logs in, and the computers are all frozen by Deep Freeze. So sure, I might go and set the server field to the district First Class server the first time, but I still get a call for that problem regularely. I'd like that settings file to travel with each staff member, so the My Documents folder would redirect to their share drive, and the settings file for First Class will then be transfered there instead.

If anyone knows how to make Folder Redirection work and could let me know how it would work in my current configuration, please let me know. Thanks!

[pooley]

What error's are being thrown up in eventvwr m8 |?

[link470]

What error's are being thrown up in eventvwr m8 |?

none

EDIT
after a few more tries, I finally did get an error in event viewer. It said
"This security ID may not be assigned as the owner of this object."
But it also was able to transcode the name from %username% to the correct folder share.

EDIT 2
that was a simple fix actually, I just unchecked the grant user exclusive rights checkbox and itw as good to go. But does anyone know how to get rid of the My Pictures link? I don't know why that's always there at the beginning by default. theres a shortcut for my pictures under each user that really doesn't need to be there. thanks!

[pooley]

I think (going from memory) you can select "Do not specify administrative policy for My Pictures" in the My Documents folder redirection policy.

[link470]

That's what I thought too, and it's selected, but does Windows care? Nope. Now it's added My Music as a bonus. lol. the life of Windows. I've turned it off for now, if anyone can think of a simple way just to make the My Documents folder redirect to the H drive with no special my documents folders being created inside of it as soon as its redirected, that would be great and much appreciated! I just have kids once in awhile doing the obvious save to the My Documents, going back to the same computer the next day and finding its not there because they don't know what Deep Freeze is.

[Michael]

Why are you specifying \\servername\foldername\username? The way I go about is to specify \\servername\username$ as the homefolder then on the server, create a folder called "Users" for example and create their directories within here.

I then use Autoshare, which will automatically share all the folders for you to the relevant user on the network with the correct permissions.

In Active Directory (using Folder Redirection) specify these settings:

Basic - Redirect everyone's folder to the same location

Redirect to the user's home directory

On the Settings tab, tick to enable: Move the contents of My Documents to the new location

Leave the policy in the new location when the policy is removed

This is what I use at all my schools and it works. Hope this helps.

[pete]

@Michael

If you use \\server\yeargroup$\%username% for their home path, it'll create the shares itself. Create the accounts, select them all in AD and then bulk modify them for groups / home drives / common info.

[Michael]

@pete - It doesn't really make that much difference to me, as I have tools which automate everything from the home directory in AD \\servername\sharename$, creating the folders themselves, then using Autoshare which shares the folders with the correct permissions.

I seemed to recall (years ago) using %username% didn't work as intended and created other problems. I suppose I've been reluctant to try other methods as I have a method which works (as it's supposed to).