Frustrating intermittent temporary profiles issue

[ryanplym]

Hello,

 

This week we have had massive issues with students logging in with temporary profiles. None of our students have roaming profiles only staff. The staff accounts appear file but just recently we have had an entire classroom of students logging in with temporary profiles given them an "admin" type look no custom icons on their desktop or start menu.

 

The frustrating part is that when you ask a student to restart their machine, after 3 or 4 attempts they can see their profile again, desktop background, custom desktop and start menu then when they restart or log off they are presented with a temporary profile again. On occasion we have had students logging in with the custom desktop icons, start menu but just a black background rather than the one I set in group policy.

 

I have spent countless hours going around to 30 machines in the classroom removing all profiles in C:\users and removing the keys in the registry under profilelist taking the machine off the domain and putting it back on but again the same issue has occurred. Now its starting to take affect in other classrooms the students log into. I have checked the security settings and permissions and everything looks fine. I have even changed one of the group policy options to "Do not log users on with temporary profiles". As a last resort I have rebooted the server and restarted the DNS service but no joy. I am now at a complete loss and desperate for any help. Thanks in advance.

[Zourous]

I would imagine it is creating a temp profile when their local profile is already on that PC and for some reason it can't open it. Are they mandatory profiles or does each student have a separate profile?

[ryanplym]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

 

They are mandatory profiles. We have folder forwarding on the students start menu and desktop both stored on the server. I have tried removing the locally stored profile on each machine and removed the registry entry under profilelist but its hit and miss. I have a test student account setup tried logging into 30 machines and 20% of the machines pick up the profile without any issue but the other 80% either log in as a temporary profile or they can see the custom desktop/start menu but not our custom school wallpaper. When logging off and back in using the same account, the machines that logged in fine previously now log in with a temporary profile or just a black background. After 3 or 4 restarts I can log in without any problem.

 

Thanks

[Meldrew]

A few thoughts:

- To delete the profiles, don't mess around manually, use delprof2. This will delete profiles for you, even on a remote PC. With the help of a batch file, you can wipe profiles on your 30PCs by pressing a button and not get out of your chair.

- Does the issue happen on a freshly built PC?

- Do you have to use mandatory profiles? Try just with no profile at all and see what that does. Its what I do on my network. Seems to work a treat.

- Is there anything helpful in event viewer?

 

Meldrew

[ryanplym]

Hi Meldrew

 

Thanks for your reply been up until 1.30am last night and started again at 8 am this morning and I think it's am issue with the permissions thanks for your advice on using delprof2 this will certainly come in handy. All the students shortcuts are linked to our net apps folder\custom\students then sub folders named start menu and desktop. If I try to access these folders as a student I receive an access denied message so I allowed the test student access to this folder and still have the same problem although some other computers log in and can access the folder no problem I am really confused now

[craigw]

Jut my 2cents - we had major issues with Temporary profiles issues that appeared to be related to the google update service installed as part of chrome.

We ended up disabling the service (not enough) and hacking it out of the registry and the problems then went away. This was 12 months ago and we haven't revisited it yet to see if new versions make a difference.

I have no evidence other than cause and effect and other people saying the same things in other forums - but worked for us.

We deploy chrome updates via MSI packages so this has been the only negative as staff often chase us when chrome complains it is not up to date We normally push an update each half term.

Wally

[win]

When i see that happening it is either permissions or network connectivity, in this case i think it is network connectivity.

 

After logging in do they have access to internet?

Do you have enough IP addresses?

[TurnItOffAndOn]

I have started to get this problem today too. I am also getting resource errors whilst doing gpo deployment.

I wondered if it was a windows update or Sophos causing the issue. I am currently re-imaging pc's to see if that helps. I have also moved pc's out of groups in AD to see if this stop it but to no luck.

[TurnItOffAndOn]

Right I have removed Sophos and it is now playing ball. All gpo stuff is applying and no more temporary profiles. Must log a call with Sophos.

[TurnItOffAndOn]

Scrap that one. It has just done it after 6 different logins.

[TurnItOffAndOn]

It will also not allow us to open ie11.

[TurnItOffAndOn]

I think we may have a solution for this problem.

 

We have visual studio installed on these PC's. We have found an article on the internet that talks about visual studio seems to give the registry the impression that it is full. So we made the following change to the registry and it now seems to be fixed.

 

The key we added was;

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]

 

Added a dword; RegistrySizeLimit = 41ffffff

 

Re-boot the PC and no more temporary profiles.

 

I hope this helps

 

Ant

[SteveFL10]

We are an IT service provider and we had several clients with this profile issue this past Monday morning. Rebooting the server (DC) fixed the problem. We continue to have the same intermittent log on issues for three days now. All of the environments are different, some are on terminal service, some are logging in to a domain. Different antivirus products. I am thinking that it must be a Microsoft thing. Possibly related to a patch that was recently pushed out. Anyone have any news on this?

[ryanplym]

HI Thankyou so much for all your replies so far I really appricate your help. I have tried everything I can possibly think of

 

- Changing the server cables to a new switch

- Restarting the DNS server

- Deleting the group policy and creating a new one

- Changed the registry key as suggested from TurnitOffAndOn

- Removed Sophos

 

I have reached the end of my knowledge and completely stuck. Whats even stranger is that even when I delete the group policy, delete the profiles from the machines some still pick up on our custom wallpaper and some desktop shortcuts. I am glad I am not the only one experiencing these issues. I wonder if it is a Microsoft Update that has caused this problem.

[marsdenprimary]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList <<< If you have a look here, after deleting the profiles on the local machine, you might find the profiles still exist (something like S-1-5-21-xxxxx) if you delete those too you might be ok. Worked for me on occasion.

[TurnItOffAndOn]

Are any of you suffering with blue screens on startup and shutdown? We seem to be and then it wipes out the reg fix we do and they un-activates the PC from KMS.

 

We have now used two different builds now and get the same issues. I am starting to believe it is either a driver issue or a hardware issue.