GPO User Folder Redirection -Win 7 - Duplicate Folders?

[crouchy221]

Hi all,

 

Firstly apologies if this is in the wrong forum and/or has been mentioned before. I couldn't find it anywhere else when I searched.

 

Now then, we're currently in the process of setting up a completely new network so we can scrap our old out of date one and do things 'properly'. We are basically almost there with it and are down to the last few policies. One of them is to redirect the user folders to the network share. We've set up the network mapping (currently set to U:) which works fine and goes straight to the My Documents folder for the user on the network, however the 'User Documents' you access through the Windows 7 start menu by clicking on the username is behaving very strangely.

 

For some reason when we have redirected the folders it has kept a link to the local profile copy also. For example 'My Documents' is set to redirect to the user home directory which works but there is also a second 'My Documents' folder also. We've denied access to the extra folders so users can't save there anyway but it's obviously going to cause confusion having duplicate folders.

 

Even weirder is the 'My Pictures' and 'My Video' folders which are set to follow the documents setting for redirect are duplicated but instead just say 'Videos' and 'Pictures'.

 

We thought of running a script at start up to delete the duplicates but this is only masking the issue, not solving it and also is obviously adding extra processing to log on (though minimal, as I said we are wanting to get things right from the start not start off with quick fixes)

 

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Michael]

This is the default behaviour for Windows 7's Libraries. You can remove the entry on the Start Menu by enabling the following GPO:

 

User Config > Policies > Start Menu and Taskbar - Remove user folder link from Start Menu - Enabled

 

Users will still see the Local Documents when they save in Word for example, but the default will be their own mapped drive first. I've not had any problems with end users changing this, due to the way it's presented to the end user.

[sonofsanta]

Do you mean the duplicate folders appearing in the user root? i.e. when you click the username on the Start Menu and you see all the user folders, and there are many duplicate ones?

 

If so, you want to replicate this GPO (from my DC): u - Remove Duplicate Profile Folders.htm.txt (delete the .txt extension, I have to rename it as the forum doesn't allow .htm uploads. It's innocent though, promise)

 

That goes through all these extraneous folders that exist locally and sets them to hidden so the user can't get confused. I prefer hidden to deleting them for speed and safety - the folders are still there so Windows won't ever whinge about their absence, but the user won't see them.

 

There's also a GPO set to prevent people saving in this root location directly, which is stored locally and therefore no use to anyone as far as a network environment goes.

 

(disclaimer: this was based on the work of others on here, but I can't find the original post. Sorry. If anyone does find it, pipe up so I can +rep appropriately)

 

You'll also find lots of help in this sticky thread, and for future reference, I believe threads on the config of Windows 7 should go in the Win7 forum, even though the policies are being set up on a 2008R2 server

[psydii]

Install this on servers and clients before doing anything else. Then test again.

 

Many things in the previously mentioned sticky thread are cleared up by it.

 

I have seen the duplicated My Documents folders in our environment, however they have never been a source of problems since the live My Documents always seems to be the one that takes precedence.

[crouchy221]

Michael - We enabled the setting originally but we don't want to take away too much functionality from Windows 7 and wondered if there was a way around it.

 

Sonofsanta - That sounds perfect thank you so much. I'll definitely take a look at that thank you again. The reason I posted in the 2008 forum also by the way is because we've not tested the policy with any XP machines just yet and so I didn't know if the problem was a Win 7 issue or a generic GPO server issue. Apologies.

 

Psydii - I believe that we already have the patch installed, but I'll double check this first. Thank you also.

[Michael]

Unfortunately no, it's a Windows 7 'feature'. I believe it's the same for Windows 8 too.

[Minkus]

An easier way to do this that we found was to run the following commands on each system BEFORE the first user logon:

 

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Desktop"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Documents"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Downloads"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Favorites"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Links"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Music"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Pictures"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Saved Games"

attrib +H "C:\Users\Default\Videos"

 

This hides all of the relevant folders in the Default User profile before they are copied over into each new profile. If the folders are redirected by Windows, they will remain hidden - if they are not, it appears that Windows removes the Hidden attribute itself as part of the profile setup - so this is the perfect solution whether you are using Folder Redirection on all folders or not.

 

It seems to work fine on our system - shame that Microsoft don't recommend this as it is much easier than all the other solutions we've found such as deleting the folders or enabling 'Move the contents' as in KB2533930.