Folder redirection

[Olliedawg]

Trying to get folder redirection set up for our staff members & move away from roaming profiles (finally..) to speed up login times.

 

My idea will be to have each staff member use a local profile on each machine, with folder redirection set up to redirect "Documents" to their home folder.

 

Testing this with a new test teacher account, in a seperate OU with the staff GPO duplicated & linked to this OU. Folder redirection set up to redirect documents to each users home folder.

 

It works if the roaming profile is left set in AD. If i remove the roaming profile, and leave the profile path blank to force local profile, once logged in on the new local profile the local documents folder does not redirect to their home folder.

 

The home folder is mapped upon sign in, and can be accessed fine by the test account.

 

I can see an error in Event viewer as follows.

 

Is this expected behaviour? I'm fairly new to folder redirection & have never set it up before. Just seems strange that it does not work for the local profile, but does for the old roaming profile. Am I better off using a Mandatory Profile?

 

- -      1085   0   3   0   1   0x8000000000000000      4556         System   *COMPUTER NAME*      -   1   5139   1   1625   1003   Cannot complete this function.   \\*SERVER NAME*   Folder Redirection   {25537BA6-77A8-11D2-9B6C-0000F8080861}     

Edited May 18, 2023 by Olliedawg

[mjhardisty]

So, in AD you add a home directory and map it to a drive letter? This works as expected?

[Olliedawg]

So, in AD you add a home directory and map it to a drive letter? This works as expected?

 

Yes, the mapping works as expected with a home directory - although the "Documents" folder on their profile does not redirect once I change the profile to local. I am new to setting this up, is this normal behaviour for folder redirection?

[mjhardisty]

Try this group policy.

 

[Olliedawg]

Hopping back onto this as its now half term & i have some spare time! Appreciate the responses.

 

Still having the same problem - as in if create a new user, assign permissions to their home folder & place in the test OU which has the folder redirection GPO set up, once the user is logged into (with a local profile, set by leaving profile dialog box blank in AD), the documents folder does not redirect to their home folder. The home folder does indeed map correctly & can be accessed.

 

*edit* attached photo of my GPO settings

 

If I add a user into the OU which has a roaming profile set, the redirection works perfectly. Seems to just be when I remove the profile in AD, which is annoying as I am wanting to move away from roaming profiles.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Olliedawg

[Tys]

Without too much looking at this, have you tried with "Grant user exclusive rights to Documents" set to Disabled? And the GPO is in the Users OU rather than the Computers OU right?

 

After logging in, if you run "set" in command prompt, do homepath and homeshare look right?

 

Half term for us here too, but I'm in the midst of an (unplanned) core switch replacement.. fun fun fun!

[Olliedawg]

Without too much looking at this, have you tried with "Grant user exclusive rights to Documents" set to Disabled? And the GPO is in the Users OU rather than the Computers OU right?

 

After logging in, if you run "set" in command prompt, do homepath and homeshare look right?

 

Half term for us here too, but I'm in the midst of an (unplanned) core switch replacement.. fun fun fun!

 

Doh! That does sound fun! 😆

 

I have not tried setting exclusive rights to disabled - will give it a go tomorrow!

[mjhardisty]

Yep, duplicate the GPO settings as per my post and try again.

[Olliedawg]

Seems to be working now... why does that setting break it? Doesn't make sense to me, surely you would want the user to have exclusive rights to their own home folder

[mjhardisty]

No idea - possibly some legacy instruction! Glad its now working.

[Olliedawg]

Another strange issue!

 

So folder redirection officially has been enabled on the Staff OU's. Issue I am now facing, is that 4 staff members are reporting their H:\ folder not being found & showing an error stating that the share may have been moved/deleted.

 

These 4 staff members did previously have access to their Home folder before the GPO change, and did keep documents in the share. I have checked on the share myself & their home folders are indeed missing. The home folder location is set in AD properties as so for each user - * \\server\staff$\%username% * Searching for document names on the drive which contains the share brings nothing back. I have also checked Local documents for each user, nothing.

 

Below are screenshots of how the GPO is set up - I see no issue with this at all

 

For one of the users, I created a new home folder and assigned them permissions. This redirected with no issue whatsoever. It's almost like their original Home folders are stuck in limbo somewhere, but I have no idea where to look now!

[mjhardisty]

Move should be disabled ...

 

See if you can recover from a backup!

[Mako]

Seems to be working now... why does that setting break it? Doesn't make sense to me, surely you would want the user to have exclusive rights to their own home folder

 

Granting the user exclusive rights sets the permissions to be the named user and local system only, which causes issues as all other accounts, including administrator account(s), are restricted. If the designated folder already exists and is NOT owned/created by the named user then the redirection can fail. Basically it's a setting that should always be unchecked and then permissions set on the root share to properly propagate permissions.

[Olliedawg]

Had to recover some user data from a backup taken during half term. (thank god we had the backups!) I also never want to work with roaming profiles ever again!!

[mjhardisty]

Hopefully now a thing of the past.